


What I Had To Do

by the_sinnamon_roll_writes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I have a theory that Shiro calls Pidge Katie when it’s just the two of them, I love ambiguity, There’s a nod to the comics at one point but it’s not crucial to the plot, also klance if you squint, and plance at some points if you squint even harder, basically if voltron had been made for adults but w/ no sex, i'm sure this has been done a million times over but i wanted to do it so here we are, shiro x Matt is pretty heavy but it’s not really the focus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-06-24 14:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15632580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_sinnamon_roll_writes/pseuds/the_sinnamon_roll_writes
Summary: Pidge journeys to find her brother.Changed name from Finding Family to What I Had To Do cause let’s be honest, Finding Family is a crap name and the story went way beyond what I originally meant for it to.





	1. The Search

She was so close. Finally she had a solid lead to go on, after over a year of searching, she had _something._ Just a blurry picture with barely enough detail to make anything out. But Pidge could recognize that face anywhere. 

Matt. 

It had been easy enough to tinker with the resolution to get an image clear enough to recognize some of the other faces. Her next step was to find out who those other faces belonged to, and where they were hiding. No doubt they would be among other rebels, fighting against Zarkon. God knows they were smart enough to be a pain in his Galran ass. But she was getting ahead of herself. First she needed to tell the others about her plan. 

They were all taking some down time, relaxing the part of the Castle that had been unofficially labeled as the break room. Lance and Hunk were side by side, laughing at something Lance had done, and Shiro, Allura, and Coran were sitting together. It was the final group that Pidge made her way over. “Shiro, I need to talk to you. About my brother.”

“Oh? What about him?”

“I have a lead.”

“What kind of a lead?” Shiro asked skeptically. 

“The kind that will lead to an even bigger lead if it works. And it will work.”

Shiro shifted to focus his full attention in Pidge. He was perhaps the only one who was just as invested in Matt as she was. Allura and Coran were listening as well, their eyes occasionally flitting back to Shiro to see his reactions. “Okay. What’ve you got?”

“Well, remember that intel I got back on Beta Traz? I managed to clear up the image enough to see who was with Matt when he escaped, and I was able to identify what they used to blow up the cell. Nano-thermite titanium-boron. There’s only one person that sells that stuff anywhere remotely close to where he was being held, and I tracked him down to make him tell me.”

“And where would you go from there?”

“I would go get Matt from there.” Pidge sounded like Shiro had caught her off guard with an extremely obvious follow up question. 

Unfortunately that wasn’t quite a good enough response for Shiro. “Pidge, you need something more than that. I can’t let you risk going off with only half a plan. You’re a valuable member of our team, we can’t risk you on the off chance that this guy knows where Matt is. You know I miss him too, but I’m worried this is clouding you judgement; I’ve never seen you try to rush in without thinking things through.”

“Look, I have thought this through as much as I need to. What I do from there depends on what I get out of the guy, okay? I’ve been feeling so much more... _connected_ to him. These last few weeks, I’ve just been feeling like I’m getting closer and closer. I know it sounds weird, and I can’t really explain it. But I know that he’s almost with me."

“Pidge-“

“Shiro, what if I promise to come back after I talk to this dealer? No moves after that until I check in again.”

Allura cut in. “Pidge, I think Shiro is right. This should wait until we’ve secured more followers for the Coalition. Or at least until Olkarion is more stable.”

“Guys, I’m not asking for permission. I’m asking for your support, but I’m going one way or another!”

A silence followed Pidge’s outburst, and she realized that the other Paladins had fallen silent too and were staring over at her. She could feel frustration building up in her chest. To hell with them. Spinning around, she started to walk off, grinding her teeth as she went. 

Only to be stopped by Lance running in front of her to block her way. “Come on, we just need to talk this through a bit. You’re the rational one Pidge, you can’t just storm off.”

“Ugh! Lance, move, or I will _make_ you move.”

“Oooh, I’m so scared of the short little teenager! She’s being mean to me!” Lance said sarcastically. His grin quickly disappeared as she grabbed him by the collar and yanked him down to her level. 

“This short little teenager has already taken you out before, remember? Now get out of my way.”

“Uh, I would get out of her way Lance,” Hunk chimed in from across the room. “That really seems like the thing to do here.”

Lance looked over at Hunk, looking slightly betrayed. “Hunk, I thought you’d be on my side! Do you really think that this is a good idea?”

“Well no, not really, but I’m not gonna try and stop Pidge. I trust her, mostly. She can make her own decisions, right Pidge?”

“Yeah. Now move Lance.”

“No.” It struck Pidge that he was willing to get his ass handed to him to try and protect her. He didn’t say anything else, and just stared her down, looking unusually serious. 

At least until Shiro walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder to pull him away. “Pidge, I get it. If this is something you need to do, then we won’t stop you. You have our support. Just come straight back here and tell us what you learned before you do anything else. And if you find him first, bring him back safe to me- us.”

“Okay, I promise I will. I’m going to finish loading some supplies into my lion.” She didn’t look back as she spoke. She had already packed her last bag and had it sitting on the floor just outside the room. Excitement drove her speed up to a jog toward the hangar where the Lions were kept. Time was of the essence after all. 

Lance was right behind her, still not satisfied. He only had to power walk to keep up with her pace. “Finish? You’ve already started? And you’re just _now_ telling us?”

Lance’s indignation was enough to make Pidge smile. “Well yeah, I said I was going no matter what. I really only told you guys so you wouldn’t think I just went missing and waste time looking for me,” she said. 

“Alright, that’s it, Pidge I’m going with you! Just give me like, ten minutes to pack some of my own stuff into Red and we can leave.”

“No Lance, you gotta stay here in case something comes up. You guys might end up needing the extra firepower.”

“What if you need the extra firepower?”

“I’m not planning on getting into any fights! Green is set up with her cloaking device, we’re just going to sneak by everyone, easy peasy.”

Shiro caught up with them just outside the entrance to the hangar. It looked like he was going to walk Pidge out, but Lance caught him by the arm and pulled him aside just before he could follow her through the doorway. “Look Shiro, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“If Pidge needs to do this-“

“We don’t even know if Matt is even still alive. She shouldn’t be alone when she finds out. I’ve got a really, _really_ bad feeling about this.” They were both whispering urgently, occasionally glancing in Pidge’s direction. 

“Lance, I don’t want her to go either, but we have to support her choices. We can’t just keep her locked up.”

“I wish we could...”

“Wish you could what?” Pidge surprised them both, popping up on Lance’s screen. 

He nearly jumped out of his socks. “Nothing! We wish nothing! Nothing... dangerous on your trip! Right Shiro?”

“Uh- yeah, of course!”

“What’s happenin’ out here? Is Pidge gone already?” Hunk walked in just in time to see the Green Lion take off. “Aw man, I missed her!”

Upon seeing Hunk, Shiro reached out and snagged Lance’s wrist, angling the display so that Pidge could see him. “Hey, we’ll be right back, I’m gonna get you set up on the main screen.” He then shut down the display and ushered the other two to the main castle hall where Allura and Coran were waiting. As they entered, Pidge’s face appeared up in front of all of them. 

“Pidge, I don’t like the idea of you going alone. You sure you don’t need backup?”

“I’m sure,” she said patiently. “The intel that shopkeeper gave me leads me to believe they could pull out of their location at any time. I need to act fast. This may be my only chance. Plus you guys still have plenty to do on Olkarion.”

“You’re right. Good luck.” Shiro’s tone didn’t match his words, grim and foreboding. He very clearly was not happy about the arrangement. 

“Hey, while you’re out would you look for some more fluuto beans?”

“No nononono no! No more beans for Hunk!”

She groaned and rolled her eyes dramatically. The goofballs. “Gotta go.”

•••

The place she landed was janky, with sketchy figures in abundance. Still, Pidge wasn’t particularly worried. She may be small, but she knew she was capable of handling herself. The shop she found herself at had many rows of cluttered shelves in desperate need of tidying. She made her way around the isles until she found the man she was looking for. Or rather, the Unilu she was looking for. 

“Shops closed.”

“I’m just looking for directions to a show... I heard it’s explosive,” Pidge replied conspiratorially. 

“So you’re the one looking for the nano-thermite titanium-boron? Very expensive. Difficult to procure, I assure you.”

She nearly rolled her eyes. His attempt to bait her into offering more than she already had was pathetic. No subtly, no finesse, he might as well run his fingers together and ask her to cough up the dough. For now though, he was more useful if things were kept polite. “Keep it.”

“You’re backin’ out of our agreement?”

“Altering it. In your favor. I’ll still give you the money, but, in return, you tell me who is in this video and where to find them.”

“Why would I know those people?”

Feigning ignorance. Irritating, but understandable. If the Galra found out he was selling dangerous substances to rebels, there would be hell to pay. She wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “Because they used nano-thermite titanium-boron, and you’re the only one in this section of the galaxy that seems to be selling it.”

“I’ve had some good luck selling things of value. And I think the Galra would pay a lot to know how you got your hands on that security footage!” He said, greed glinting in his eyes and he stood up and drew his swords. 

“Really? _This_ is how we’re doing it? All I want is the information.” 

She’d thought for sure that the offer of money and the keeping of the product would be enough to get the information. While she had figured in for the Unilu greed, Pidge hadn’t considered the Unilu ambition. Of course he would try and go for the bigger score. And she supposed that she did look to be an easy target; her small frame was incredibly misleading. What she lacked in size, she made up for in everything else. As he jumped on his desk to lunge at her, she took advantage of his uneven footing and kicked the desk away from her, dropping him to the ground. Without skipping a beat, she launched her bayard at a box behind him and jerked it forwards, whacking the back of his head hard enough to knock him out, preventing him from finishing his lunge at her. 

_“Had_ to do it the hard way,” she sighed as she knelt down and started to tie him up. 

It wasn’t hard to find what she needed once the Unilu was out of the way. His technology was almost embarrassingly easy to get into. To Pidge’s delight, he’d already gotten the nano-thermite out from storage and in a drawer in his desk. 

“I gotta say, your customer service is lacking. I’m not gonna pay for this. And since you insisted on being an asshole, I think I will take your nano-thermite titanium-boron. Thanks for the intel,” she said casually with a smirk over her shoulder. Someone would come untie him eventually. Long after she left. 

Pidge wasted no time in loading back into her Lion and taking off. She started to review the files she had gotten as they flew out into space, right after securing her other cargo. There was enough there for her to cross reference her facial recognition software and identify the face of the one leading Matt away. 

“Te-osh... last known whereabouts... Kraydah’s Moon. There to help work with supplies- oh hell, she could leave at any time! I gotta get there, looks like- okay, it’s two quintants away. How old is this report? Eight quintants. So even if she isn’t still there, there should be somebody who knows where she is. Green, we gotta get there as fast as we can! We gotta get to Kraydah’s Moon-“

Wait. Her promise to Shiro and the others. She had to rendezvous with them. But if she only had a couple of days to reach the rebels in time- she would miss her chance. 

The Paladins would still be there. She could find them. The rebels were moving. If she didn’t catch them in time, then she would lose the best lead that she had had since entering space. That was her only choice. 

“Sorry guys. I’ll be back later than I thought.”

•••

Two quintants later, and she was approaching Kraydah’s Moon. And she hoped to god that what she was seeing were just dust storms. A few clicks on her screen confirmed her fears. “Oh no- it’s a Galra attack!”

No time to waste. It looked like the rebels were holding off the invaders, but were taking heavy fire from two enemy ships. Rather than spend too much time thinking of what to do, Pidge just decided to channel her inner Hunk, and crashed straight into the larger of the two vessels. The smaller one pulled back, no doubt to regroup with remaining forces. She landed her Lion down in front of someone who appeared to be in charge. Now time for some diplomacy 

“Greetings. I am lieutenant Ozar. You must be one of the Paladins.”

“Yes, I’m Pidge. What’s going on?”

“We defeated a wave of Galra forces,” the lieutenant replied gruffly. “More are coming, so we’re evacuating. But now that you’re here, we might stand a chance. Will the other Lions be here soon?”

Oops. Maybe not the best time to show up on her own mission. “I’m sorry, Voltron isn’t coming. It’s just me. I’m looking for Te-osh. Is she here?”

Luckily, Ozar didn’t bat an eye. “Te-osh is inside the base loading up the last of the medical supplies. We were just about to leave, your timing is most fortunate.”

Yes! Pidge had to stop herself from punching the air. She hadn’t missed her! “Thank you. I’ll give you a hand loading up, I just need to speak with her first.”

“Thank you, Paladin Pidge.”

She broke into a jog towards the base. Finally after all this time, she was going to talk to someone who would know who Matt was, and possibly where to find him-

* _Boom_ *

Fire. Debris flying at her, the base starting to crumble. 

_“No!”_ Pidge had to jump backwards to avoid being crushed, throwing up her shield to avoid being directly struck by hurtling rocks. Even then, she was knocked down onto her back. 

“They’re back!”

Then the ship that was carrying the supplies started to take off, followed by three Galra ships. And with it-

“Te-osh! Wait!” Pidge started sprinting back to her Lion, shouting at the lieutenant as she went, “get to cover!” 

She lept into the air, firing her jet pack to give her a burst of speed. The Green Lion was opening its mouth, Pidge launched her bayard and essentially flung herself into her Lion just as it closed her in. And not a minute too soon. Her feet had hardly touched the ground when she was almost thrown down by a direct shot to Green’s head by a Galra ship. 

“You’re really, _really_ gonna regret that!” Pidge jumped into her pilot's seat and turned her Lion around to chase after them, just in time to jerk out of the way of another shot. Which hit the rebel’s remaining ship. “Oh no.” 

_Fuuuuck!_

Okay. First priority: taking out the attacking ship. Easily done, just hurl it down to the ground as hard as she could. 

“Is everyone okay?”

“For now, thanks to you,” Ozar called. “But our ship is damaged. We are stranded and cannot help Te-osh. Please, Paladin. You must help her.”

“What about you?”

“We know what it means to fight the Galra. The supplies on that ship are more important that our lives.”

God. Shit. Damn it. There was no way she could just leave them. They’d better hurry. “Everyone aboard, now!”

And the chase was on. There still appeared to be two fighter ships tailing Te-osh, and her ship wasn’t looking good. 

_*Boom*_

__

One fighter ship trailing Te-osh. 

__

“Te-osh, I’m a Paladin of Voltron. I’m here to help,” Pidge said, hoping that Te-osh’s transmitting system was still operational. 

__

_“Please- ugh, I’ve been hit.”_

__

Not good, not good. There was still one firing Galra ship, and Pidge had to take it out without hitting Te-osh. It was just too fast. Okay, she just had to chase it... away... until she had the angle... there. 

__

She yelled as she activated the Green Lion’s vines. After the Galran ship was taken care of, she flew immediately to the supply ship, running as fast as she could to the pilot’s cabin. Te-osh was there, groaning and hunched over the control panel of the vessel. 

__

“Oh no... are you okay?” She helped the woman down to the floor to stretch out. 

__

Te-osh coughed weakly. “The ship... those supplies are needed immediately.”

__

“Not without you,” Pidge said firmly. She held up her gauntlet, pressing a few things to pull up and X-ray of where Te-osh was holding. So many breaks... “that’s not good. I’m gonna get you some help.”

__

Coughing again, Te-osh was struggling to focus on what was happening around her. Eventually, her eyes locked onto Pidge. “... Matt?”

__

Pidge froze. “He’s my brother. I’m trying to find him.”

__

“You look so much like him,” Te-osh sighed. “It’s the eyes...” she broke off, coughing painfully. It seemed like every word she spoke was harder and harder to get out. She reached into her robes to pull out a small remote. “Here. Every rebel officer has one of these transponders. It’s how we find each other in the field-ah... he may not have his anymore, but this is his code. Now please... please help me get these supplies to my people.” Her breathing grew shallow, and her eyes slipped shut. 

__

Pidge could only stare in silent horror. If only she’d been a little faster, she could’ve stopped this. She could’ve saved Te-osh. She was just... too late. Pidge clutched the transponder tightly in one hand over her heart and squeezed her eyes shut. 

__

The supplies. The medicine. It was too late for Te-osh. But there were still countless other lives it could save. She had to help them for the cause. She couldn’t fail for Te-osh. 

__

Although it felt wrong to leave her body there, Pidge knew she had to in order to follow Te-osh’s last request. Standing up and turning around, Pidge made her way off the cargo ship and back onto her Lion. “Everyone, please listen. We need to tow this ship to where it needs to go. I’m going to need some help getting it set up.”

__

“Paladin Pidge, where is Te-osh?”

__

Pidge only shook her head. That was all they needed.

__

•••

__

“This should be far enough, Paladin Pidge. I’ve sent our coordinates to the rendezvous party and they will be here shortly. Thank you for your help. These supplies will save countless lives in our fight against the Galra. I am sending you my transponder code. May the Paladins of Voltron always be able to find me if necessary.”

__

“Thank you.”

__

This has been a tough journey. It felt like everything was working against her right now. The Unilu, the Galra attack, Te-osh... brush it off. She had made it this far. With the transponder to guide her, it should be a straight shot to Matt. The end was near. 

__

This time Pidge didn’t even think of the other Paladins. Here was a way for her to directly track Matt, and she was going straight to him. 

__

•••

__

She had lost track of where they were at. Too busy reflecting on everything that had happened in the past few days. No where she had been before, although that wasn’t very surprising. Space was big. In any case, she wasn’t too concerned about getting lost. The Green Lion has a galaxy positioning system installed after all. 

__

What worried her was the lack of life anywhere around her. She hadn’t passed any ships, Galra or otherwise, and the last life bearing planet she crossed had been where she dropped off the the supply ship. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. After all, not every part of the universe was populated. Still, she grew more and more confused as the signal from the beacon got stronger, but no signs of life were appearing. 

__

She had to navigate around planets that had been destroyed by the Galra, carefully making her way though the scattered pieces of rubble that remained. There came one that she passed that looked like all the others, dead and rather eerie. But as she passed by it, she noticed something. The transponder changed directions, following the planet as she flew on. A planet drained of all its quintessence. Totally lifeless. 

__

“No... no, no, no.” That was all she could think as she approached the ruined planet. It wasn’t possible that the planet was only for- no, there had to be a town, a rebel base, anything there where she could find Matt alive. There was always something. However, as she flew in closer and closer, she could find no sign of civilization, and registered no life on the surface. 

__

Finally she landed at a tall monument, with several different alien races carved into it. 

__

_“In honor of the 127,098 brave warriors that stood against a tyranny. The quest for freedom is won through sacrifice.”_

__

No. 

__

_No._

__

She found herself sprinting through the narrow passageway towards the other side. “No! Please, no!” When she finally emerged, what she found nearly made her vomit. 

__

It was a graveyard. 

__

Massive, seemingly endless, with no signs of life. 

__

Not even flowers could be seen in the barren wasteland. Nothing could survive here. She started to run faster, tripping over her own feet at times, but desperate to locate her brothers signal. He _had_ to be here, after all she had been through, he just had to. He was just here to pay his respects, or maybe the dolt had dropped it without realizing it. Losing her lead would have been better than the alternative she was facing. She kept on sprinting towards the beacon, although the farther she went the less she wanted to go. Her legs were heavy and growing harder and harder to move. He was straight ahead now, his signal was finally appearing on her scanner. Any minute now she would look up and see him. 

__

Almost. 

__

There. 

__

She was right in font of him. All she had to do was look up and see him. So why couldn’t she stop staring at the ground? Every part of her was shaking when she finally forced herself to look up. Her heart was pounding. No. 

__

Where there should have been feet, there was only ground. 

__

_No._

__

Where there should have been legs, there was a tombstone. 

__

_No, please god, no._

__

Where there should have been a kind, smiling face, there was just a dark sky beginning to storm. 

__

Her mind was rejecting everything she was taking in. It was all moving so fast, even though the world was perfectly still. There had to be something she was missing. Some clue. Somewhere. Somewhere here, there was a clue. 

__

•••

__

She went through every algorithm for codes that Matt had taught her, running any number and letter she came across, no matter how ridiculous, from the dates and names on the grave to those on surrounding tombstones, even to the coordinates of the planet. She tried to run scans through the ground, which only confirmed that there was something buried there. She did everything short of clawing through the dirt to dig up whoever was down there. Only the thought of actually seeing Matt’s... of seeing Matt like that stopped her.

__

But she had to know. The ground beneath her was densely packed and hard to break through, but her bayard was harder, and she was determined to prove her fears wrong. It seemed that they didn’t bury the dead as deeply here as they did on Earth, and in no time at all, she hit what she was looking for. It was some sort of pod (probably what passed for a coffin here), with a thick layer of grimy glass. Frantically, she wiped it off, smearing her handprint through the filth. 

__

Pidge stared down at the face in front of her. Every perfectly preserved feature was so familiar, she could have painted them in her sleep. And despite the fact that the date on the tombstone said that he had died nearly four months ago, he was perfectly preserved. 

__

At least his body was. Whoever put him here had captured none of his warmth, of his inquisitiveness, nothing else that made him who he was. It was all just gone. 

__

Nothing. After all she had been through, now there was nothing. 

__

Suddenly it really hit her and she couldn’t look anymore. Closing her eyes tightly, she shoved dirt in the general direction of the hole she had just excavated. When she opened them again, there was just a loose pile of soil in front of her. As much as she couldn’t stand to be there, she couldn’t pull herself away. Four months, god she had been so close. Her arms wrapped around her stomach and she leaned forward until she was in a fetal position with her forehead on the ground. All this time she hadn’t cried, now it all came bubbling up and she began to sob uncontrollably. 

__

“I’m so sorry- I was too late!” Her voice was ragged. She could only breath in painfully strained gasps. “Matt- I was so close! I could’ve done something, god damn it! I could’ve stopped this, I could’ve saved you!” 

__

She kept going on, crying, rambling, screaming, totally oblivious to what she was actually saying. She went until her throat was so raw she couldn’t make any more sound. 

__

Even after she fell silent, it took her hours to force herself to stand up. She was nearly freezing from the cold, but she couldn’t feel a thing as her Lion flew over and carefully scooped her up it it’s mouth. There could’ve been a gaping wound bleeding her out and she wouldn’t have noticed. 

__

For so long, the thought of finding her brother had kept her going. He was her best friend. Her only friend, for most of her life. She could remember how horrified, how devastated she had been when she first the news about what happened on Kerberos. But there were holes in the story back then, things that didn’t add up that were enough to give her hope. Now she knew exactly where he was at, and it was worse than she could have ever imagined. There were no holes- it all added up perfectly now. 

__

It might’ve been a surprise to find herself in the Green Lion had if she’d been more tuned in, but she was operating entirely on autopilot. She couldn’t remember getting into her Lion, nor could she remember changing out of her soaked suit, climbing into the pilot seat, and setting a course to the Castle. Somewhere deep down, she realized that Green had apparently sensed her turmoil and took over for her. It was hard to explain, but Pidge could feel her Lion mourn with her. In some way it made it a bit easier; she was a little less alone. 

__

With the Green Lion flying herself, Pidge was left alone with her thoughts. Her mind was a whirlwind of fond memories, all tainted. Now whenever she tried to think of a happy time with Matt, his smiling face was replaced with the cold, lifeless one she had just seen. When she tried to remember when she and Matt had spent a day at the beach, playing in the sun, all she could feel was the cold rain and hard ground below her. All she could do was sit in her chair with her knees up to her chest and her face tucked down and will herself to forget.

__


	2. Second Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang helps Pidge to move on.

How would she tell the others? How would she tell Shiro? As time passed and she and Green neared the Castle (assuming that’s where Green was taking her), Pidge wondered more and more about that. The thought of telling them that Matt- of trying to be strong enough to say anything at all was more intimidating than she could handle right now. There was no way she could face them. She had put off thinking about it (thinking about anything, for that matter) for the entire return trip, and now it looked like she was only a few hours out. 

Her plan, in its entirety, was to avoid everyone. 

She would be safe in the Green Lion. No one would be getting in if she didn’t want them to. But she couldn’t stay there forever. If nothing else, she would have to go get food and water. There was no way around that as far as she could see. 

Rather than think it through as she normally would’ve, Pidge just shut back down. She would deal with it when she got hungry. Until then, there was nothing to force herself to leave the comfort of her Lion. Not arriving at the Castle of Lions. Not the excited faces of her team appearing on her screen (which she quickly turned off). Not the knocking and calling of her friends, growing more and more pleading as the minutes, hours, days passed. 

No, it wasn’t until she was faint with hunger that the Green Lion opened up her mouth. Shiro was the only one there, and for that Pidge was grateful. He was quiet when he came in and found her curled up in her seat. He walked over and knelt down in front of her. “Katie. Are you ready to come out?”

The first voice she had actually heard since she got back and thank god it was him. Any of the others would’ve gone crazy in some way or another, fussing over her, pestering for details that she wasn’t ready to offer up yet. But Shiro wouldn’t push if she didn’t want to talk. He would simply be there for her. Pidge didn’t say anything and just nodded, but made no move to get up. It felt like her muscles wouldn’t let her move, like she had rusted in place. 

Once again, she was glad it was Shiro. He didn’t say anything else either and simply lifted her up into his arms. It was the soft touch of another human being that set her off again. As Shiro stood up, Pidge suddenly felt the wave of everything she’d been trying to repress come up and overwhelm her all over again. Starting to cry, she threw her arms around Shiro’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. Instead of him holding her, now she was simply dangling down off of him. He quickly wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. 

Eventually they sank to the floor like that, Pidge sobbing and Shiro holding her together as best he could. He was rubbing her back in slow circles, occasionally taking rattling breaths of his own. They stayed like that until Pidge’s tears turned to little hiccups and she started to get ahold of herself. Once her breathing evened out, Shiro helped her to her feet and guided her to the kitchen to make her eat something. 

“Here, Hunk made a new dish for you to try. It’s pretty good, you should take a bite.”

Pidge accepted it, and without hesitation began to scarf it down. She wasn’t even tasting it she was eating so quickly. It took her three minutes to polish off the heap of food Shiro had put in front of her. Very soon after finishing, she began feeling sluggish again, nearing a food coma. She started to sway ever so slightly, and her vision began to blur. Luckily Shiro apparently anticipated this and was right there to catch her. “Alright, let’s get you back in bed. Hopefully sleep will help.”

 _‘Sleep will help’._ All she’d done for that past few days was sleep, and it wasn’t helping in the slightest. It was better than nothing though. 

“Do you think you can walk Katie?”

She started to nod, but then quickly changed to shaking her head when she tried to stand up and her legs almost buckled under her. Shiro nodded understandingly and scooped her up once again. This time she was able to keep her composure, mostly because she was on the verge of passing out. In fact, she was almost feeling peaceful. Maybe they had drugged the food or something. It didn’t really matter to her. Her eyes flickered open as they entered her room and Shiro started to lay her down. As he stood back up to leave, she grabbed his hand and, in a hoarse voice, asked, “could you stay here tonight?”

He nodded almost immediately and cleared off a chair of papers and books to sit in beside her bedside. She watched him through sleepy eyes that eventually gave in once he pulled up next to her. 

•••

Pidge had been back at the Castle of Lions for a week and a few quintants. She spent most of her time in her Lion, sleeping. It was the one place where she could retreat from herself, to be isolated but not entirely alone. Then she was nudged into training again. They weren’t putting much pressure on her, but the constant questions wore her down. Eventually she just couldn’t put it off anymore. 

It was the first time she had put on her suit since she had left the graveyard. She’d hoped that maybe things could go back to normal. They would form Voltron, fight the bad guys, come out as heroes. Same old, same old. Of course, that all hinged on the Paladins being _able_ to form Voltron. 

Which, as it turned out, they couldn’t. When once they could form Voltron at the drop of a hat, now they couldn’t get it after four hours of hard work. 

No one said it, but Pidge knew it was her fault that they weren’t able to when they tried to train. It was like she was living in a different dimension than the others, able to see, and even interact with them, but unable to truly sync with them. The more they tried, the more frustrated she got. They were having to go back to the basics. Just like old times, but infinitely harder. They ran through all the exercises, nosediving with their Lions, the invisible maze, fighting drills, even the silly feeding thing that had gotten them going when they first started. 

And each one went perfectly. All of them were able to connect with their Lions, trust each other, fight alongside each other, just as well as they had before. They just couldn’t form Voltron. It was Coran who had the idea of doing the mind meld. 

Even after all they had been through together, Pidge still hated the mind meld with a passion. Yes, they had all grown very close, but her brain was her brain, and they didn’t belong there. But when no one else objected, she didn’t either. They’d done it four times in the past, twice successfully, and only the first failure had been her fault. Maybe this time it would work. She seriously doubted it would, but at the very least it couldn’t hurt. Hopefully. 

So Pidge went along with it. She accepted the gear and joined the others in a circle. She closed her eyes, and focused on her Lion, and her connection with the others. She fought back any unimportant distractions. It was just her and the Green Lion. No unnecessary emotions. Just secure with her friends. No irrelevant thoughts, creeping into her mind, unbidden and unwelcome...

And there he was, clear as day for all the Paladins to see. God, how could her last memory of his face be one where he was covered in mud and blood? It took a minute for Pidge to remember that the others could all see him too. Her eyes widened and threatened to overflow with tears as she took in expressions before she scrambled to clear her mind again. 

Allura covered her mouth with her hands and averted her eyes to the floor in an attempt to be respectful. She knew what a private person Pidge was, and she could only imagine how mortified she must’ve been. 

Hunk was staring through the vision at Pidge, with his chin trembling. He looked like he was hardly able to keep himself from lunging at her to wrap her up in a bear hug. 

Lance was looking back and forth between Pidge and the image of her brother, shocked. He suspected he was shaken for different reasons than the others. He’d forgotten how much Pidge and Matt looked alike. At first glance he mistook Matt for Pidge and his heart had dropped. Now he couldn’t get the thought of Pidge- in that position. Pidge, who he considered to be one of his closest friends. It was, to say the very least, an upsetting thought. 

Shiro looked heartbroken. Pidge was reminded once again that he and Matt had been a couple for a long time, even before the Kerberos mission. This must’ve been a bad time for him as well. The others only knew him from stories, and only mourned for her. But Shiro knew Matt, and had loved him. He had lost someone he was close to, whom he had risked his life to protect. Suddenly Pidge felt a rush of guilt for having made Shiro see that. 

An unnatural hush had fallen over the room. Pidge’s jaw clenched and her face turned red. She goddamn _hated_ this exercise. No one said a thing as she stood and removed the head piece, dropped it on the ground, and walked out. One by one, the other four quietly took off their head gear as well. Hunk place his on the ground, Allura’s in her lap. Lance fiddled around with his idly, and Shiro just stared down at his in his hands. 

“So that’s what he looked like.” Shiro finally broke the silence. His face had gone pale and he was clearly shaken. “They- they didn’t even clean him off. I wish I hadn’t seen that.”

“There were probably just too many bodies to keep up with. I wish she hadn’t seen that,” Allura sounded very matter-of-fact, though her eyes were sad. 

“Guys, what can we do about this? How can we help get her through this?” Hunk blurted out. “I hate seeing her like this.”

“We never see her at all. The past few weeks she’s only come out of her rooms for training!” Lance was understandably frustrated. He had no experience dealing with other people’s grief, and in many ways it was harder than dealing with his own. “I knew we shouldn’t have let her go!”

“Lance, she would’ve found out one way or another.”

“Well another way and she wouldn’t have been alone when she found out! You should’ve let me go with her, Shiro! I told you!”

Almost immediately Lance regretted what he said. Shiro looked so shocked and hurt by his outburst. And although he felt bad, a small part of Lance was angry enough to not apologize. 

“I know,” Shiro said quietly. “I kept you here because I- I wanted the two of them to have some privacy to reconnect. Because I thought- hoped- that he was still alive. But all I did was make her go through that alone.”

“Paladins, we can’t do anything. This isn’t something we can fix, Pidge needs to come to terms with this on her own. It’ll take time, it’s not easy going through something like that. To lose someone you were so close to...” Allura trailed off a moment before catching herself again. “I’m still going through it. Occasionally I think of my father- and I never had to see him dead. I can only imagine seeing Matt like that in person must have been horribly traumatic.”

“I- I can’t believe how much they look alike. It was like seeing Pidge be- being dead or something.” Lance stumbled over his words uncomfortably. Everyone else nodded in agreement. “Wait, has anyone told Keith? Didn’t he and Matt meet sometime? Wouldn’t they have known each other?”

“We have no way of getting ahold of him right now. The Blade of Marmora should be checking in with us any day now though. When they do, I want you guys to let me tell him,” Shiro asserted. “When Keith was younger, he got close to Matt when I did. He should hear it from me or Pidge, and I doubt she’s gonna want to tell him.”

That was met with various murmurs of assent before they all began to disperse. Only Hunk and Coran remained. “Coran, there’s gotta be something we can do. We can’t just let her do this to herself.”

Coran sighed. “Right you are. I don’t know how though. What does she like? Maybe we could make her something.”

“She likes her tech stuff. I think she likes my baking. And lately she’s liked being in her room alone.”

“You could just be her personal butler then! Stand outside her door, at her beck and call, ready to drop everything at a moments notice! She’d be crazy for it!”

Hunk shook his head. “No, that would just make her crazy. Pidge isn’t fond of people being around her when she’s in a good mood, she’d absolutely hate it if we tried to force our company on her now. What if... what if we could make her some sort of food teleporter? Like on Star Trek?”

“What is Star Trek? Some silly, impossible human thing, like Lance’s self cleaning pods?” Coran asked. 

“What’s Star Trek? Coran, you’re my friend, and an alien, so I’m going to forgive you this one time. And once we figure out how to help Pidge, you and I are going to remedy this wrong by binging every episode and movie of each Star Trek series. Now, I’m thinking we probably can’t actually teleport things, but maybe we could engineer something to store food and can transport the food to Pidge’s room really fast? Something that she could tinker with and make hers.”

“Oh, I think I have an idea of what you mean. It would need to connect directly from the kitchen to Pidge’s room and move fast enough that whatever we send stays hot or cold long enough for her to get it or send it back. Perhaps to limit the possibility of combustion we could try and use some sort of pneumatic or hydraulic motor? Since it won’t be used continuously, that way we could have it in place with no drain to the Castle’s energy source.”

“Yeah! Alright, what do we have that could work for insulation?”

•••

“Okay, Pidge has left her room and should be on her way to her Lion. I’m going in.” Hunk took a deep breath before opening her door and letting his jaw drop at the absolute mess in front of him. “Geeze, she lives like this? Never mind, problem for later. Coran, can you hear me?” he asked. 

“I hear you. You remember where in the wall we need to cut to finish this thing up? I’ve got the motor running, you need to get the exact size and fit for this to work efficiently. After that we just need to get the shaft all the way in place from here to there and give it a test run.”

“Right, I’m already there. Can I keep this laser thing? It’s about ten times better than anything I’ve ever used. I’ve already got my hole cut out! Alright, I’m putting in our cupboard, time to send up the mice with the rest of the chute and the silicon so I can make this baby airtight enough for it to do what it needs to do. I’ll give you a ping when I think I’ve got it, and you send the tray up.” It took him less time than he had anticipated to stay it set up. When he finished, he shut the little see through door and let it seal on its own. “Okay Coran, lets see if this dumbwaiter works.”

“Well, it’s not a dumb waiter. I think it’s actually very smart if I do say so-“

“I’ll explain what a dumbwaiter is later, I want to hurry up and get this working so I can leave her room. I feel like I’m invading her privacy, she’s got all sorts of stuff spread out and I’m trying to not to look, but it’s really hard! Send it up!”

“Okay, sending it up. Did you get it?”

“Yup!” Less than two seconds and their makeshift pneumatic elevator had reached its destination. Safe to say that Hunk was incredibly pleased with himself. He sent it back down and rushed out back to the kitchen. It felt like a cookie situation. 

Somehow he timed it just perfectly. Pidge was leaving her Lion and returning to her room right as the first batch of cookies was leaving the oven. Excited, he hurried over to his dumbwaiter and placed a tray of cookies along with a short note onto the platform they’d installed. He also placed in one of Coran’s echo cubes, which he had recorded a quiet but high-pitched _*ding*_ on. Unfortunately he was too far away to see or hear her reaction. It seemed to have gotten her attention though as the powerful dumbwaiter came speeding down again, this time without the cookies. But his note was still there.

Hunk tried not to be hurt by that.

He picked it up and opened it up to see if he had accidentally included any material she might have misconstrued as being offensive or distasteful. 

“Pidge- I can’t fix this for you, but hopefully I can make you feel better. Just let me know if you need to eat but can’t leave and I’ll send you something.”

Then he grinned when he noticed at the bottom of the page, her signature little doodle of herself with a smile. It didn’t solve the problem by any stretch of the imagination, but he liked to think that he’d made her day a little brighter. 

•••

“Hey Shiro,” Hunk said casually, sitting by the door in the break room to make sure Shiro didn’t try to make a break for it. “How’s it hangin’?”

Shiro had been reading a story when Hunk came in, but he set it down and smiled when Hunk sat down. “Good. You?”

Hunk flashed him a thumbs up. “So things have been a bit crazy lately, huh?”

“I’ll say. I don’t think I’ve seen Pidge more than twice the week, and one of those times was when we were training. This whole thing with Matt has been so hard on her.”

“Yeah... but what about you?”

“Me?” 

He looked surprised, and from that, Hunk’s suspicions that no one had thought to approach him were confirmed. No one on this ship had any tact. “Well, yeah. How are you handling this? You can’t tell me this isn’t affecting you. You and Matthew were dating, weren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah, we were. For a long time, actually. Did Pidge tell you that?”

“No, I saw your face during the mind meld. You’ve seen a lot of death, but I’ve never seen your face do that before. I figured Matt meant more to you than just a friend. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.” Hunk sounded very matter of fact, but he was keeping a very close eye on Shiro to make sure he didn’t cross any lines. 

“It’s okay. I wasn’t trying to hide it. Both Pidge and Keith knew. There’s just never been a reason to bring our relationship up.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So how are you? We’re all concerned about Pidge, but you’ve spent so much time worrying about her, I don’t think you’ve been doing anything for yourself.”

That seemed to throw him for a loop. “I- I don’t actually know. I haven’t let myself think about it.”

“Well, think about it right now.”

“I’d rather not... it’s not good.”

“Shiro, someone died, of course it’s not good. But right now, it’s okay to not feel good. You’re not supposed to feel good. You have to experience that not good feeling so you can really feel good again. Repressing it will just make it build up, and make it worse and worse. You can’t hide from it.”

“Okay. I never wanted to think that he was dead. It’s at least partly my fault. It was my job to protect them, but I couldn’t do that.”

“There was no way you could’ve gone against the Galra at that point. Did you guys even have weapons? It was a research mission, you didn’t have anything aside from some stuff for basic self defense. You wouldn’t have stood a chance against a battleship.” Hunk had scooted closer to Shiro and had a hand on his shoulder. 

“I know, but…” he sighed. “I know. It’s hard to think of it that way though. Hunk, I want to help Pidge so badly, but it’s so hard to look at her. Do you know how much she looks like him? It’s like looking at a clone,” Shiro said guiltily. 

“Yeah, I always have to ask when I see a picture of one of them which it is. But they’re not exactly the same. Pidge has darker hair, and she’s short. And just looking at them, I get the feeling that she’s louder than he is.”

That got a laugh. “You’re right there. Matt wasn’t exactly soft spoken, but compared to his sister, he may have well as been a mime. Pidge must get it from her mom, her dad was pretty quiet too.”

“Were you close with his family?” Hunk baited. 

“I knew Mr. Holt, but I haven’t met Mrs. Holt, and I only met Pidge when I met the rest of you. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize her right away.” Shiro sighed again. “I wanted to make a family with him. He was the first person in a long time that I’ve felt that kind of connection with.”

“What about Keith? Aren’t you guys family?”

“It’s different. Keith is my brother, and I’d never turn my back on him, but Matt... Matt was special. That’s really the best way I can describe it.”

Hunk nodded slowly. “I get it. It really does sound like he was a good guy.”

Another chuckle. “Good guy is putting it lightly. He was wonderful. Kind, smart, funny, everything you look for in someone. He was strong, in his own way. Never gave up on anything or anyone. I’ve never met anyone else quite like him before.”

“You might meet someone like him again. Or someone different, but still great in their own way.” Hunk hadn’t prepared for dating talk, and now he was having to say things just off the top of his head. “There’s a whole universe out there. It’s statistically impossible that there’s no one else with similar qualities out there. Even on Earth they say that there are at least seven people walking around who look like you. That’s gotta apply to other traits, right?”

Shiro smiled and patted Hunk’s upper arm. “It’s just... I never really let myself believe that he could be gone. Now, knowing for sure that he is... it feels so much more alone.”

“Well... I know it’s not the same, but you do still have a family, here with us. You’ll never be alone as long as we’re all still kickin’.”

•••

The Blade of Marmora check in right on schedule, as usual. Keith and one of his superiors were up on the screen, reporting to Shiro and Allura what they’d been doing and what sort of intelligence they’d gathered. They were as to-the-point as ever, relaying all their information in less than ten minutes. As soon as they were finished and making to break off the connection, Shiro spoke. “Wait, I need to talk to Keith alone, if that’s alright.” Allura reached out and gently squeezed Shiro’s upper arm before leaving. Everyone else nodded and left the room on Keith’s side. 

“What’s up?”

“Keith... there’s no easy way to put this. Matt is- he’s dead,” Shiro’s voice got caught in his throat for a second. 

“What? Shiro, this isn’t funny, where is he? Did he put you up to it or something?” Keith asked, almost desperately. “Come in, put him on screen.”

His jaw fell as Shiro shook his head. “But- he was so… plucky. How do we know he’s gone?”

“It was Pidge. She was able to track down where he was, but when she got there... apparently she wasn’t in time. She wouldn’t have come back without him.”

“Pidge... how is she? How- how are you? Are the others okay?”

“Most of them are doing fine. Pidge is having- a _really_ hard time,” Shiro said, picking out his words carefully. “I am too, to be honest. I really loved him. He was special. And he helped me through some tough times. I thought when I saved him- I really hoped he would make it back.”

“I’m so sorry Shiro. When did this happen? When did you find out? And how did he... go?”

“Pidge found him about a week ago, but he’s been gone almost four months now. I don’t know exactly how he died, but I’m guessing from the shape he was in that he went out fighting.”

“The shape he was in? So you actually saw him?”

“Pidge did. I’ll explain that later. I know this isn’t the best time to be talking about this but-“

“I’m on my way there. I need to see you and Pidge.”

“Keith, are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t even know if Pidge will want to see you. She hasn’t been really talkative lately, even to me. And I’m sure you have a lot of work to do for the Blades.”

“It can wait. I just want to see if there’s anything I can do to help right now. Matt was my friend too. I can probably be there in three weeks.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

••• 

“Hello Pidge,” Allura said softly, knocking on the door. “May I come in?” She didn’t get a reply, so she let herself in. 

Pidge was there, sitting down at her desk looking a picture. It was a little hard to see from Allura’s angle, but not so hard that she couldn’t see a dirty Matt Holt, clearly in some sort of fighting stance. Somehow Pidge had managed to find some video footage somewhere, pinpoint Matt, and zoom in without sacrificing any quality. It seemed that she was trying to edit the image to make him look less filthy and more like himself. Maybe it was easier for Pidge to picture him like this, more normal, peaceful. Like he wasn’t fighting for his life. Like he wasn’t going to die soon. 

Allura walked over to stand by Pidge and looked down closer at what she was doing. “He was very handsome.”

“Not really. He looked like me,” Pidge replied without looking up from her screen. 

“Very pretty then.”

“What do you want Allura?” She sounded more weary than irritated. 

“To talk. We haven’t really spoken in some time, I was just hoping to remedy that. Do you want to talk?”

With a heavy sigh, Pidge turned from what she was doing to face Allura. In truth, she hadn’t actually spoken with anyone since her return. Sure, she had communicated a few things with the others, but her conversation skills had taken a real hit recently. But if Allura was wanting to talk, she might as well go with it. “Okay. What did you want to talk about?”

Might as well just jump in. “About you. I’ve been worried. We all have. I thought maybe you would like to talk to me.”

“That doesn’t clarify things. Talk about what?”

“Perhaps how you’re feeling. About how these last few weeks.”

“I’d rather not.”

“It will help, believe me.”

“How would you know?” Pidge snapped petulantly. 

“Pidge, I could probably relate to your situation more than anyone else on this ship. I’ve lost my father, my mother, and my people, everything that that wasn’t on this ship. Just try letting it out.”

“I don’t know, okay? I’m sad, angry, guilty, I’ve lost my best friend! That’s all I can really say! For so long... I’ve spent almost two years looking for him and my dad. Mostly Matt though. Even though everyone said that they were gone, I never believed it. I guess,” she continued with a bitter laugh, “that I was right, telling them all on Earth he was alive. The last time I was down there he still was. I was just... too _late._ I was so close Allura. I was almost there.”

There really wasn’t an answer to that that wasn’t a total cliché, so Allura decided to push past it. “Tell me about Matt.”

“Um... what do you want to know?”

 _‘Come on, Pidge work with me here,’_ Allura thought. “What was he like? How close were you?”

Pidge took a deep breath before she spoke. Then it started spilling out like a flood gate had been opened. “He was... he was wonderful. He was my best friend. I couldn’t make friends in school, but it didn’t matter because I had my big brother, and he was better than any of them. Matt was always there for me, I couldn’t have asked for a better brother. Most siblings are at each other’s throats, but he and I never fought. I was closer to him than anyone. Our dad was a scientist, but it was Matt who got me really into it. He was who I wanted to be like when I got older. And now he’s gone.”

Allura has been smiling until the end. “But he’s not all gone, Pidge. You still remember him. That part of him lives on with you. I’m sure he’d be so proud to see you now.”

“He’d be more than proud. He would always make such a big deal whenever I achieved anything, even if it was like, passing a test. If he’d heard that I made it into the garrison, he would’ve had a field day. Maybe it was because dad was away so much, he wanted to fill that role or something.”

“From what I’ve heard from you and Shiro, that’s what he was like regardless of where your father was. I’ve spoken with him about Matt as well. He said that Matt was someone who was enthusiastic about everything around him.” She paused a moment before continuing. “He also said that Matt bought you up at some point in almost every conversation they had.”

That bought a small smile to Pidge’s face. “Really?”

“Yes. I think that he looked up to you as well.”

“I just- I felt so close to him, Allura.”

“It’s hard losing anyone; losing someone you’re close to is infinitely harder.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, I felt like I was closer to finding him. It was like- I don’t know, like he was already here or something. Trying to guide me to him. Even now, it’s like he’s still out there somewhere. I guess I just feel… I don’t know.”

Allura nodded slowly. “It makes sense, I suppose. You found the lead, naturally it would make you feel a step closer to him.”

“Maybe. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

That came out of nowhere. “You shouldn’t be doing what?” Allura asked, confused. 

“I shouldn’t be changing his face here. He died fighting to help people, not peacefully. That’s how I wanted to imagine he went. But erasing the bad stuff- that’s erasing what he died for.” While she spoke, she turned around and started to undo the editing she had done. 

“He was a brave man. I wish I could have met him.”

“Me too. I wish he could’ve seen this place. He would’ve loved it.”

Allura moved a little closer and placed her hands on Pidge’s shoulders. It was hard to judge what the right thing to say would be in a situation like this. Many words of comfort would just be too textbook to actually work. But maybe, since Pidge knew that she had felt incredible loss too, it might just work. “Pidge, I do promise it will get better. 

Pidge tensed and paused what she was doing, and for a moment Allura worried that she had overstepped her boundaries. But then she sighed and reached her right arm around her chest to rest on Allura’s left hand. “I know. But it’s not right now.”

•••

The rest of the Paladins were too comfortable with breaking into her room, Pidge decided as Lance barged in through the doorway. “Hey Pidge. You wanna go play that game?” he asked casually. 

“You still have that? We couldn’t find any place to plug it in, how are we supposed to play it?” Pidge responded without looking up from some sort of weapon she was making with the nano-thermite she had stolen. She was sitting crossed legged on the floor and totally focused on what she was doing. Being walked in on was becoming old hat by now, and she was no longer letting it bother her too much. However, she kept hoping that if she minimized her conversation and eye contact that they would get the hint and leave her be. 

“Hunk actually managed to get it all set up somehow. He and I have been playing, but we’re stuck. We were hoping you could help us out. Or we could just chill. It’s been a while since you and I have actually hung out with each other. I don’t know, I guess I just thought you should take a break from work and do something fun. You never come out, I figured a little time outside would you do some good.”

“Lance, we’re in space. If I go outside, I could die a very painful death.” She was totally dead pan as she worked. 

“You know what I mean!”

“I’ve got things to do!”

“So do I! That doesn’t mean we have to do it!”

“That’s exactly what it means!” Pidge exclaimed, finally looking up. Seeing her face full on, it became clear to Lance that she wasn’t sleeping enough, as evidenced by he dark bags under her eyes and her general haggard appearance. 

“Come on Pidge, you’re burning the candle at both ends. I’m being realistic here, no one can work this hard for this long and still actually be- working! You’re no good to us like this, if you don’t take a break and let yourself relax you’ll get us all in trouble when we fight!” Lance crouched down in front of her and poked her cheek. “Come oooonnn.”

“I don’t want to,” Pidge replied stubbornly. 

He poked her forehead. “Piiiidge.”

“Go away.”

He poked her neck. 

And was delighted to see her jump and giggle involuntarily. Her eyes widened in comical horror and her hands flew over her mouth in a feeble attempt to hide her reaction. But the damage was done, and Lance had a devious grin on his face. Without giving her much of a chance to do anything, Lance jumped over to land beside her and started mercilessly tickling her neck and sides. 

Almost immediately Pidge was laughing and rolling around away from Lance. He chased after her, laughing equally hard when she started to turn it on him. It turned into an all-out tickle war between the two of them wrestling on the floor. Despite Lance being considerably bigger than her, Pidge was able to put up a good fight. They were both giggling and having a grand old time together. Their fun went on until Lance rolled into and knocked over the bomb that Pidge had been working on. 

Almost simultaneously, Pidge and Lance gasped and jumped to their feet, taking several steps back. They waited anxiously. They were so close, and in such tight quarters that an explosion could very well be deadly. 

Nothing happened. 

“That- that should’ve gone off,” Pidge said uncertainly. “Why didn’t it go off?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not complaining. I’d rather not be blown up.”

“Well obviously I wouldn’t either, but what did I do wrong? It’s a simple mechanism, I’ve made bombs before. Why would this one not work?” She picked up her creation as she spoke and began investigating it slowly. “Did I forget... how could I forget that?”

“What’d you forget- did you say you’ve made bombs before?” 

“Well whenever I make bombs like this-“

“Bombs, plural?”

“Yes. Whenever I make them-“

“When have you made multiple bombs?” 

“-I always set a catalyst in place, so it can be quickly and easily detonated by the enemy, without my having to be there. Without it, I have to actually either light it myself or take the time to set up a remote interface. I can’t believe I forgot one. I mean, I never forget things.”

“Well,” Lance began slowly, “You also don’t try to do work without sleeping for four days straight with no breaks.”

“I guess you have a point.” Pidge’s was staring at her creation with a frown. Although she was glad on some level that it hadn’t gone off, she wasn’t used to her machines failing like this. 

“Look, I don’t understand what you’re going through right now. I mean, I do, but I’ve never been in your shoes, so I don’t really. I don’t know exactly why you’re not sleeping or doing anything besides staying in your room working. Well, I get that you want to be alone and I’m guessing the work is distracting. I forgot where exactly I was going with this, but I want you to know that you’ve still got three other brothers. And a sister. And a space dad. And a weird space uncle. We’re all here for you.”

“Lance... It’s my fault. I should’ve gone after him as soon as had the chance. But I didn’t.”

“No. Don’t do that to yourself. You didn’t have anything to go on then, so you made the choice to save other people while you were looking. Come on, think of how many lives we’ve saved since we’ve been up here. And through all of that, you still managed to find him. Just, um, not the way you thought you would. You did everything you possibly could have. You’ll meet again soon. Some things just aren’t meant to be. Sometimes these things just happen. Uh... the universe works in mysterious ways. Are any of these making you feel better?”

Pidge swallowed around the lump in her throat and let out a weak laugh. “The last one got me. Thanks Lance.”

Lance took that as an invitation to hug her, and so he did just that, picking her up and squeezing tight. He managed to get one more soft chuckle out of her before he let her go. “Okay, my work here is done. Try and get some rest or take a break or something,” he said, waving as he started to walk out the door. 

“Wait, weren’t you going to show me how Hunk managed to get that game up and running?”

“Okay! Yeah, it’s in the break room, and it’s pretty sweet.”

As they walked to the room, Lance told her about where he was at in the game and what he’d been having trouble with. The Castle was empty, Pidge noticed as she unintentionally tuned Lance out. She waited for a break in the chatter before asking, “where is everyone?”

“Huh? Oh, I think they’re all out doing something. I don’t know what. I did hear that Keith is on his way here.”

“What?” Pidge stopped dead in her tracks. “Keith is coming here? Why?”

“Umm... I think to see us? Probably offer condolences? Is that okay?” Lance looked incredibly confused. Although it was possible that she was just surprised that Keith was coming all this way, but the look on her face made him think that there might’ve been another reason for the odd reaction. 

“Yeah. Of course. Let’s go,” she said shortly. It was hard to tell as she strode past him, but it looked as though she might’ve been grinding her teeth. 

He considered pursuing the matter further, but decided that he’d better not push his luck. He’d already gotten so much farther today than he’d expected; he really didn’t want to take any steps backwards. This one would have to be Keith’s problem. Now it was time for him to figure out how to beat this boss.


	3. Clearing the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and Keith have a heart-to-heart. Shiro shares a secret.

True to his word, Keith showed up at the Castle of Lions three weeks later. He landed on Olkarion right next to the Paladin’s base. The Castle’s defenses were down, and he was able to walk right in. He hurried first to the main control area, then to the break room when he didn’t find anyone. There he found Lance and Shiro sitting together talking. Lance had calmed down considerably, and appeared to have forgiven Shiro in time between now and his outburst. They both stood up and smiled when they saw Keith. Shiro walked over and hugged him, followed closely by Lance. 

“How’ve you been Keith?”

“Been busy. What about you guys?”

“Things are going a lot better than they were. We were finally able to form Voltron yesterday,” Lance said. He couldn’t keep his goofy grin off of Keith. It had been awhile since they’d last seen each other in person, and he seemed so much more sure of himself now than he had before. 

“Wait, you weren’t able to form Voltron? Why not?” Keith asked, eyes widening. 

For the first time, Lance’s smile faltered, and he and Shiro exchanged an uneasy glance before Shiro answered. “Things have been a little emotionally unstable around here. It’s been getting better though. We’ve been trying not to walk on eggshells around her, but none of us want to do anything to upset her either. It’s so hard to see Pidge hurting as much as she has been lately.”

“Where is she now?”

“Good question. Hang on.” Lance fiddled for his gauntlet to access the Castle’s intercom. “Guys, get to the break room, we’ve got a surprise for you! There, they should be on their way now,” he said, shutting it down and grinning at Keith. 

The three of them chatted a while as they waited for the others to join them. Hunk was the first to arrive, and was followed closely by Coran, both bringing more hugs and grins. 

Pidge was next. Everyone’s eyes turned to her as she entered the room and froze in the doorway. Her face was hard to read as she took in the scene in front of her. She wore a frosty expression while staring at Keith, managing to confuse everyone. 

“Pidge!” Keith closed the space between them and held his arms out as though to embrace her. Before he could, she sidestepped out of his way and walked towards the others. 

“You called?” she asked Lance. 

“Well, yeah, Keith is here. You just stepped right by him. Look, he’s right over there.”

“I know that. Is that the only reason you called us here?”

“Is that not reason enough?”

“No, it’s not. I’m not interested in talking to him, and you’ve distracted me from my work. If there’s anything important, tell me then.” With that Pidge turned her back to walk away from them. This time she really was grinding her teeth. 

“Wait Pidge, I came to see if you were alright,” Keith chimed in, scooting so that he was blocking the entrance. “Don’t you wanna talk? Get caught up on everything?”

“No,” she snapped, sliding underneath his arm and starting to walk away quickly, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Everyone looked rather surprised by that, and just gaped after her in confusion. Allura walked in just in time to see that look on their faces. “What is it? Oh, hello Keith, how are you doing? Well, I hope.”

“Everything is fine,” Keith said distractedly. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Which way did Pidge go?”

“Well, it looked like she was going towards the Lion’s hanger. What have you...been doing?” Allura trailed off as Keith pushed by her. “Alright then. Welcome back.”

•••

He caught up with her when she was right in front of her Lion. “Pidge! What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she snapped, glaring at him. “I was just going in here.”

“What, are you mad at me or something?”

“Where’d you get that idea?” Pidge said sarcastically. “Everything is absolutely peachy.”

Keith followed her, jogging to get in the Green Lion’s mouth before it closed. “Pidge, what the hell is going on? What’d I do? Will you please just talk to me?” His voice rose to a shout as she stubbornly kept her back to him. “Come on, what’s the problem?” 

Then he made the mistake of grabbing her shoulder. 

Without a moment's hesitation, Pidge spun around, grabbed his arm with one hand, and punched his jaw in one fell swoop with the other. She might be small, but Keith had forgotten just how strong a punch she could pack. In a moment of disorientation, he lost his footing and fell to his knees in front of her. 

“Fuck, ow!”

“You stopped me. I could’ve helped him, but you stopped me from going after him. He could still be alive if it weren’t for you!” Pidge was shaking in anger as she spoke, and Keith suddenly felt very small under her wrathful gaze. “He was alive before you stopped me!”

“You can’t blame me for this! You wouldn’t have known where to start looking for him, you were just going to run off without a plan and leave all of us without the Green Lion’s Paladin!” Keith jerked his arm free from her grasp and stood up. On some level he knew that getting in a shouting match with her wouldn’t help anything, but in all honesty, he wasn’t great at handling emotions, and this was one of the few ways he knew how to express himself. He desperately needed Pidge to change her opinion. If she blamed him in part for Matt’s death, then in some way it must be true, and he couldn’t stand that thought.

“I would’ve figured something out! You took that chance away from me, and now he’s gone,” Pidge shrieked. He’d never seen anyone as angry as she was now. 

“You had _every_ chance to leave after that. It was _you_ that decided to stay with us, not me! You were the one who chose to leave him alone out there!”

Pidge bit her lip and stumbled back two steps as though he had hit her, and Keith realized that she could’ve been well aware of that fact. It then occurred to him that just maybe that’s why she was trying to transfer the blame onto him. 

Because she was shouldering grief _and_ guilt. And now he had just thrown that guilt right back in her face. God damn it. 

“Please... just leave, Keith.”

Well, she didn’t sound angry anymore. Somehow that didn’t make him feel any better. At a total loss for words, he turned around and left. 

•••

“Shit, Shiro, I fucked up. Why’d I have to snap at her like that? Ugh, I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously, she just needed some outlet. Like, somewhere to direct her anger or something. I just turned her into her own outlet! God, I feel like I just plugged one of those power strips into itself!”

“Keith, none of this is- wait, what?”

Keith stopped his upset pacing to look at Shiro. They were both in Keith’s old room, Keith standing up and Shiro sitting on the bed watching him. “You know those power outlet strips? That you plug into a wall so you have more than one outlet to plug more things into?”

“Yes?”

“Well... like, it’s pointless to plug it into itself, right?”

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you... plugged a power strip into itself?” Shiro looked incredibly confused. “I’m not seeing how this analogy works here.”

“Now I don’t either. It made sense when I first said it. I just made her feel worse by making her feel worse about herself! It’s a loop!”

They were both interrupted by the door being flung open and Lance barging in, looking well beyond pissed. He marched right up to Keith and got in his face. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean ‘what did I do’?”

“She’s been getting better over these last few weeks. She’s been coming out of her room, talking to us, training, _doing_ things! Hell, I’ve even gotten her to laugh a few times! Then you show up, and now she won’t leave her Lion again! What did you say to her?”

“I- she tried to blame me for what happened to Matt!”

“And? What did you say to her?!”

“Just that... she didn’t go after him either. And that she could’ve gone after him. And that maybe it was her fault because she left him alone out there.” The last bit was mumbled quickly, with deliberately avoided eye contact.

_“What?_ God damn it Keith! Why would you say something like that? It’s not her fault at all!”

“It just happened! I just didn’t want her blaming me. I didn’t mean it though! I- I’m sure Pidge knows that. I mean, I’m sure that she knows she’s not to blame, right?” Keith asked rather desperately. He was hoping against hope that the look he’d seen in her face was something different. 

“Dude. She absolutely blames herself. Come on Keith, that’s like, rule number one of helping grieving people! Reassure them so they know that it’s not their fault! You’ve managed to do everything you aren’t supposed to do, you rube!”

“Oh, now you're an expert? What, did you research what to do with grieving people?”

“Yes. I did,” Lance said with absolutely no shame on his face. “I wanted to know how to help her, so I looked it up. And I’m not embarrassed to admit it either!”

“Look, I wasn’t going to just sit there and take it! It wasn’t my fault! Matt was my friend too, why is everyone forgetting that?” For a moment it almost looked like Keith was on the verge of tears, and Lance faltered. But then he got control of himself and added, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

And Lance was just as mad as before. “You sure as hell did just now! I’m not saying it was your fault the Matt died, but it is your fault that Pidge is so upset right now-“

“Look, none of you are in the right!” Shiro finally burst out, standing up and placing himself in between Lance and Keith. “Keith, Pidge shouldn’t have said what she said. But neither should you! Matt’s death isn’t on anyone in this castle, is that clear? Lance, what happens between Pidge and Keith is none of your business.”

“It is when it’s my friend he’s hurting! Pidge has been a friend of mine for a long time Keith. Longer than you and I’ve been- ugh! You just need to fix this! Suck up your pride and go talk this out or something!” 

“Lance! Enough. Let them handle this between them. Keith will do what he thinks is the right thing, and we can figure it out from there. Now let’s go and give him some space to think.”

“But-“ 

“Let’s _go.”_ Shiro walked over to the door and held it open for Lance, following him closely as he left. “Lance, did you really do your research? I’m impressed.”

Lance just scowled and nodded, not looking over at Shiro. 

“Look, I know tensions are high right now. It’s hard when two people you care about are fighting, especially when they should be on the same side. Believe me, I kinda want to shake them myself sometimes. But Keith and Pidge are both dealing with this on their own way. You can only help them so much. There’s a lot that we- that they have to work through.”

“Wait... Shiro, how are you doing?” Lance asked, slowing down. “Has anyone even asked you?”

“Actually, Hunk has. He’s a good listener. And he gives some good advice. At least to me.”

“Really? What’d he say?”

Shiro smiled. “He just reminded me that even though I lost someone, I’ve still got a family here.”

That bought a smile to Lance’s face as he thought about what he’d said to Pidge. But his smile faded soon enough and he glanced over at Shiro. “What do you think Keith will do?”

“It’s hard to say with him. He likes to do the unexpected. You know, Pidge could do something too. She was a part of the fight too.”

Lance sighed heavily. “I know. I just want them to make up already. I love Pidge, I don’t want to see her like this. And- I love Keith too." 

“I know Lance."

"I wish I hadn't yelled at him."

"I know. Things will work out. You’ll see.”

•••

Keith had decided to take a page out of Lance’s book and do some research. ‘How to approach someone after a fight’, ‘how to apologize to someone’, ‘how to explain yourself’, and ‘how to clarify a missed point’ were now all in his search history. And still he felt no closer to knowing what it was he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. 

“Hey Pidge, let’s just forget about all of this!” 

No, he shouldn’t be dismissive. 

“Hey Pidge, I know I said some stuff I shouldn’t have, but I was just upset that you were trying to blame me for something I didn’t do.”

No, he shouldn’t make it all about himself. 

“Hey Pidge, I’m sorry you got upset over what I said, I didn’t actually mean it.”

No, he had to accept responsibility for what he did. Even if she wasn’t going to. It would be so much easier if he had some guarantee that Pidge would react in kind. Maybe the best thing to do would be to go to her and say whatever was on his mind-

_*Knock-knock*_

Ugh. “What?”

_*Knock-knock*_

Probably Shiro, come to give him a lecture on doing the right thing. “Look, I know- Pidge?”

And there she was, standing uncomfortably in front of the doorway. Her face was red, although he couldn’t tell if that was from crying or embarrassment. “Hi Keith.”

“Uh... come in,” he said, standing to the side. “What are you doing? I was just getting ready to go to you. I just wanted to talk, that’s all. I’m assuming that’s what you’re wanting to do too, right? You’re not gonna try and fight me again, are you?”

Pidge laughed awkwardly. “No, that’s not it. I actually wanted to talk about what we just yelled about. Well, we don’t have to talk. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Everything I said was out of line. I knew it, and I said it anyways. You and Matt were friends too, and I know that you didn’t do anything you thought would hurt him. And-“ she paused to take a deep breath. “And you were right. I could’ve... I could’ve done more. I should have done more for him.” Her voice caught and she pressed his lips together tightly. “Anyways, that’s all I needed to say. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. No one here if feeling this as much as you are, and no one did more to try and find him than you did. You took every chance you had to find him, and you saved a lot of people while you did. Hell, you’ve saved everyone on this ship before.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. I hurt your feelings, right?”

“Yeah, but then I hurt your feelings! And I feel like. Okay,” Keith stopped himself and took a quick breath to clear his mind. “I feel like what I said hit home with you way more than what you said hit home with me. Because Matt’s death is... it’s hard for me to think about, but it must be unbearable for you. And then I came in and made things worse by making you feel guilty. More guilty. Which you really aren’t Pidge. I’m sorry too.”

“So... all is forgiven?”

“Yeah. All is forgiven. On my side at least. Is all is forgiven by you?” 

“Yeah.”

They both stood in silence a moment staring at each other. 

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“How well did you know him? What do you remember about him?”

An unexpected request. “Why do you ask?”

“I just... I don’t know. I don’t want him to be forgotten.” She bit her cheek and looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to forget him.”

Keith sat down on the bed with a small smile. “I don’t know how well I knew him. He and Shiro were a few years older than me. Whenever I was with them, it was like I had two older brothers to bother. I was always trailing along behind them. Both of them were so patient with me though, they never tried to get rid of me or leave me behind. Matt liked to show me all sorts of cool experiments. I mean, most of them were actually pretty basic stuff, but it looked cool when I was younger.”

“Do you remember which ones?” Pidge prodded. 

“I remember some of them. Here,” he said, scooting over and patting the bed beside him. She took his invitation and sat down beside him, looking over at him. “So what all do you want to hear?”

“Everything.”

•••

Three hours and several tissues later, Keith and Pidge were laying side-by-side with their legs dangling off the bed. A lot of crying had taken place, but both of them were feeling much better than they had been. They’d both shared memories and feelings, a thing that neither of them were really used to. Maybe it was because they hardly ever saw one another that made it so easy. It was like talking on the phone with someone. Not entirely real.

“Have you talked to Shiro about any of this?” Pidge didn’t answer and just continued staring up at the ceiling. “I think he would appreciate it.”

“I’m sure he would. But I don’t know how. He and Matt were...”

“I know. Which is why I think you should talk to him. Matt was the first person he was serious with after Adam. They were a couple for so long. And as far as I know, they were still together when they were separated by the Galra.”

Pidge sighed and nodded. “They were. I remember getting a message from them before they were taken. Apparently they were driving my dad nuts. In the ‘my child is joined at the hip with someone’ nuts, not homophobic nuts. Dad and mom both were always really accepting. Shiro knows a different Matt than I do.”

“But it was still Matt. The only difference is in what you did with him. He knew Matt better than I did. It might be good to talk to him.”

“Mm.” Not really an answer. Alright, no sense in pursuing that any farther. 

However not two seconds later, as though he was summoned, Shiro knocked and walked in the room. “Hey Keith... oh, hi Pidge. How are you two doing?”

Keith saw his chance and he took it. “Better. I had something to run and do, you guys can stay in here and talk.” And then he rushed out past Shiro.

“But this is... his room,” Shiro said, glancing to Pidge, who just shrugged, then quickly out the door again. “So did you guys make up?”

She was just sitting on the bed, wide-eyed and looking past the door after Keith. After a moment, it clicked that Shiro had said something. “Uh- yeah, we did. All better now.”

“Good. I’m guessing it was you that came to him?”

“Yeah. Shiro. I’m sorry.”

That caught him off guard. “For what?”

Pidge took a deep breath to center herself before she spoke again. “You lost him too. I know you loved him, and he loved you too. You were together for so long. I knew as soon as I found him, you would take it just as hard as I did. But I’ve... not acknowledged that.”

Shiro was silent as he walked over and took Keith’s place beside her on the bed. His lips were pressed together and stared down at his hands in his lap. She realized that he’d hardly looked at her since he walked in. 

“Shiro?”

Why wasn’t he responding?

“Shiro, say something.”

Why wasn’t he looking at her?

“Shiro, please, I’m so sorry. Please, just tell me what I can do to make this up to you, I swear, I’ll do anything you ask. Please, I don’t want to lose you too- Shiro, please look at me!” She fell silent as he finally looked over at her. 

He hated the hurt look on her face when he couldn’t keep eye contact with her. He looked away too quickly, and she had taken it wrong. How could she not? “You look so much like him, Katie.”

Oh. _Oh_. Then there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Except to hope that she might change in appearance as she grew. “I know. I’m sorry, I can’t help that. Unless some other genes kick in, unfortunately this is what I’m stuck with.”

Shiro chuckled. “You even sound like him. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you, and I don’t expect you to change how you look, or how you sound for that matter. Matt is hard to talk about. I could’ve bought it up too, but I didn’t. It feels like there’s just too much to say and no way to say it. It’s probably overdue that we talk though, isn’t it?” He took a deep breath and looked over at her, this time holding her gaze. 

“What was he like on Kerberos? Did he like it?”

“He was crazy for it. He loved space. When we were flying, sometimes he would just sit and stare out the window for hours. Then once we landed, he spent every second he could out on the planet, checking things out. It was hard to keep up with him sometimes.”

Pidge laughed. “That sounds like him. He told me a lot about you, when we were back at home. He was so excited to go to space, even more so when he found out he got to go with you. He and my dad were why I wanted to get into the garrison, so I could go out to space one day. Well, I guess they got me out here, even if it wasn’t how I thought it’d be.”

“Pidge, I haven’t told anyone this. Matt and I were going to keep it a surprise. On the Kerberos mission… I... I proposed. And he said yes. We were going to tell everyone once we got back to Earth. We didn’t even tell your dad.”

“No way… no way!” The rage of emotion that flew across Pidge’s face was impressive. Disbelief, realization, joy, excitement, sorrow, all in less than a minute. “Really?!”

“I wanted to tell you as soon as I knew who you were. But I thought- hoped- that Matt was still alive. And I knew that he would want to tell you. Everything was going so well...” Shiro stopped and ran a hand through his hair. “I would’ve loved to be your big brother, Katie. I wish- I’d had that chance. I wish all of this was different. God, the last thing I did to Matthew was hurt him.“

It was hard to see Shiro cry. It didn’t happen very often, and he always tried to hold off a full blown break down until he was alone, but that wasn’t going to be an option now. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands on his forehead to try and shield himself from view. But any hope of hiding it disappeared as the first drops dissolved into a silent stream. 

His last good memory of Matthew hurt more to think about than he could’ve imagined. Saying it outloud and knowing that now it could never happen cause an ache in his chest that hurt more than anything he’d ever experienced. Knowing that they should’ve had a happy ending together, then having it stolen away as soon as it was in sight. 

Pidge was at a momentary loss for words and just placed an arm around his shoulders and rested her forehead on his bicep. It was all she could think to do, as she wasn’t big enough to give him a full on hug. 

“I wish it was too. I hope you know,” she said slowly, “I already think of you as a big brother. You look out for me the same way Matt did. And in a way, just knowing that Matt said yes, that you were engaged, makes official in my opinion. It was going to happen. That’s enough.”

Finally Shiro was able to sit up and rubbed his face wearily. He glanced back at her with a small smile and patted her shoulder. “I’m glad.”

“So, how did you propose?” Although she wasn’t sure that he was entirely ready to talk about it, Pidge really wanted to know. 

“I didn’t actually plan to. I mean, I’d wanted to for awhile, but I couldn’t think of the right moment. I wanted it to be romantic,” he said with a grin, “so we’d have a story to tell everyone. It didn’t turn out to be the grandiose gesture I had thought it would be, but it was more special than I could’ve ever planned. We’d been out in space about five weeks, and Matt still looked starstruck whenever he looked outside. For a lot of people, the wonder wears off before then. Even your father, who volunteered for every mission, wasn’t fazed. But Matt never lost it. He’d be just as happy staring out at the stars and planets and asteroids we were passing as he was doing anything else. I could’ve looked at him forever when he was smiling like that...” Shiro trailed off a moment before picking back up. 

“One day he caught me staring at him while he was looking out there. I was sitting down, he was standing up. He reached down and took my hand and pulled me up so I was standing beside him, and I put my arm around his waist. I didn’t mean to make him look away, but then I realized that he was looking at me the same way he looked at the stars. And then it just kinda spilled out.

‘Matt, I love you so much. I could spend the rest of my life just looking at you, and I could die happy. I _want_ to spend the rest of my life looking at you. Being with you. Talking with you, laughing with you, crying with you. Anything, as long as we’re together. I uh- I really wanted this to be a more special moment- I had plans for when we got back home- but I can’t wait. Matt... do you want to get married?’

“About the most awkward way you could possibly put it. I think I was more surprised than he was. I wasn’t scared though. More, exhilarated, I guess. I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it. I already knew what he was going to say, just by how he was looking at me. Like he was seeing the entire universe, all at once. And when he said yes, everything was perfect. It felt like nothing could go wrong. And then a few weeks later it did. Everything did.” Shiro’s smile vanished and he leaned down to rub his forehead again. 

“Shiro, you did everything you could to save him. You told me that. And so did... Lance?”

“Lance?” Shiro looked back at Pidge again, then followed her eyes to the door. Just in time to see Lance jerk back off to the side and out of sight. “Lance, you can come in here if you wanted to talk.”

“Lance isn’t here!” he called in an accented falsetto. “It’s just me, Allura!”

Then they heard a muffled thump and a yelp. Then Allura’s actual voice hissed through the door. “Shut up Lance, you’ll get us all caught!”

“He already did.” Keith’s eye roll was almost as audible as his words. 

“Guys, the door is open, we can hear all of you,” Pidge said, shaking her head. “I’m guessing Hunk is out there too?”

“And me!” Coran chimed in. 

“Do you guys want to come in here and talk?” Shiro asked. “Because you’re welcome to.”

One by one, they all filed in. Hank sat down beside Pidge, Lance and Allura hopped up and sat on the desk on the room, Keith leaned against the wall opposite the bed, and Coran stood near the door with his hands on his hips. 

“It sounds like you’ve had a long day, number five. Getting in fights, making up, sharing feelings. It’s not easy to do,” said Coran. “Are you feeling better? You were certainly looking brighter when I popped my head in. Had some color in your cheeks, a smile on your face. It was good to see.”

Pidge blushed. She didn’t appreciate being made the center of attention in emotional matters. She wasn’t exactly know for interacting with others very well. “Yeah, I’m better. You guys have all been... really great. And more supportive than I probably deserve. I know I’ve been having some difficulties with- well, with everything. But you’ve all been a great family. So thanks.”

“Aww Piiiidge!” Hunk was the first one to throw his arms around her and Shiro, closely followed by Lance and Coran. Allura waited for the movement to stop before she walked over to take part. Keith was the last to join in, and only did so when everyone simultaneously looked at him and gestured him over. 

They really were a unique family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come!


	4. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title says it all!

Weeks later and things were finally starting to return to normal. The Paladins were forming Voltron and traveling from distress signal to distress signal once again. It was at planet that they hadn’t yet visited where they found another group of rebels who’s supply line had been cut off. An easy fix, compared to how things usually went. No fighting this time, just simple delivery and recon. They’d decided to take a break before leaving again, and they were walking among a small market that the residents of the planet had set up. Although it had some interesting things to check out, there weren’t very many people there. 

As usual, Pidge was staying very alert to her surroundings, keeping an eye out for anything odd or potentially dangerous. So when she saw a figure walking around the market with a dark hood that converted his face on, she was understandably on guard. She stiffened when the person looked over at them and froze. Whoever it was knew who they were, and had just started a beeline towards them. “Guys, look alive we’ve got someone coming at us.”

Then he took off his hood. 

“Oh my god... _oh my god!”_ Pidge screeched before any of the others even had a chance to react to what she’d said. She leapt forward and began sprinting towards whoever it was. Her heart grew lighter and lighter as she neared, recognizing the familiar face. 

It was Matt. He caught her and held her tightly when she jumped into his arms. “Matt- I thought you were dead! I found your grave! How are you here? Where have you been? Who did you bury? I have so many questions!”

Matt started to talk at the exact same time. “Katie! Who are all these people? Why aren’t you on Earth? What are you doing in space- how did you get out here? I have so many questions!”

They finished together and laughed. They took a step apart, but Pidge couldn’t help but keep one of her hands locked in one of his. She used her other hand to wipe at some tears that were threatening to fall out. Wouldn’t do to go crying now before they even could get caught up. Matt didn’t seem to think much of it though; it looked like he was having to blink back some tears of his own. 

He cleared his throat. “Alright, I’ll answer first. In order, I got here on a stolen Galra ship about three months ago, since then I’ve been trying to help there people. Before this I used to spend time in the little battleship I got and go ambush smaller posts. You know, take out as many as I could. As for who was buried... it was a friend of mine. We talked before about what to do when the other dies. We each had different plans. Mine was to die. No one looks for someone who’s dead.”

“How did you make him look so much like you?”

“I scanned my face and made a 3-D image of it. It took me a couple tries, but I managed to render a decent mask of myself. I used a polyvinyl alcohol gel and added some nanoparticles for realism, then threw some gashes and blood and boom. Pretty awesome, huh?”

“Awesome? Matt, I thought you were dead because of that! These last months, after I saw your grave, have been the hardest months of my life!”

“Oh Pidge- I’m sorry. I never thought you would be the one to find me. I- I didn’t actually think anyone would find me.” 

“Pidge never gave up on looking for you.” Shiro walked forward to stand a few steps behind Pidge. Matt gave Pidge’s hand a squeeze before letting go and striding to him. 

There was no preamble; he jumped right into Shiro’s arms, much like Pidge had just done to him. Matt was much larger than he had been before they were separated, and he almost knocked Shiro down. He managed to catch them on a display table before that could happen. Matt’s arms went around Shiro’s neck, and Shiro’s hands went on Matt’s waist. Their foreheads were pressed together, and Matt whispered something that Pidge couldn’t hear that made Shiro laugh and kiss him. They were still perfectly in sync with one another after almost two years. 

He was alive. He was alive and here now and everything was perfect.

•••

“Wait. You’ve been to another reality?”

Pidge smiled smugly at her incredulous brother. “Yeah. It’s no big deal.”

She had just spent the last hour excitedly showing Matt around the castle and telling him all about what she had been through, and he was looking at her in total admiration. 

“My little sister.” It was hard for him to believe that this girl was the same one he’d left on Earth so long ago. He could remember her as a baby. And now she was in space, saving worlds and toppling empires. They grow up so fast. “I can’t believe you’re a Paladin of Voltron, Pidge! I can’t believe how much you’ve done, it’s amazing!”

Pidge was basking in his attention. Finally she had him back. “So what are you going to do now? Will you stay with us in the Castle?”

“I have to go where the rebels need me most. But I’m sure they could use someone to work closely with the Paladins. I think I can stay, at least for a little while. And even when I have to leave, now we’ll be able to contact each other. We won’t have to be apart so long any more.”

“Too bad for the Galra. With you and me working against them together, they won’t stand a chance!” she said holding her hand up for a high-five. 

“Dork.” Although Matt laughed, he still met her high-five enthusiastically. 

“Do you know what happened to dad?” 

Pidge’s question caught Matt off guard. He hesitated, opening and closing his mouth quickly, frowning. 

“Matt?”

“I’m sorry Katie. I don’t know what happened to him. They took him away when I was sent to the pits. I- I haven’t seen him since then. I’ve heard of a couple leads, but nothing has actually gotten me anywhere. I know that we can find him together though. So don’t give up hope just yet, okay?”

She studied him closely. His pause left her wondering if there was more to the story than he was telling her. But he was almost always honest with her, and she had to trust him. “Okay. I won’t. Now, tell me more about what you’ve been doing for the rebels.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter made me so happy.


	5. Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fast forward to the end of season 6. This chapter on all take place in seasons 6-7, so don't read if you're not caught up!

For months after finding Matt, things had been going as smoothly as could have been expected for their ragtag group of rebel forces. Until it came out that Lotor had been killing Altean refugees. Then everything went to hell in a handbasket very quickly. 

Romelle had shown up with Keith and Krolia just after Lotor and Allura entered the quintessence field. To say that they startled to remaining Paladins was an understatement, and Coran was in a state of total awe and bewilderment. 

She came with an incredible story. Lotor gathering Alteans when the war first began. Thousands of Alteans still living, even thriving for ten thousand years. Romelle’s family. Bandor. The second colony. 

The quintessence, harvested from the Alteans. 

It left them all in horrified shock, and Coran grew angrier than any of them had ever seen him. The only reason he didn’t fire on sight when Lotor returned was because he had Allura with him. “Paladins, make sure you’re ready for a fight. I truly hope it comes to that,” Coran said furiously. “I would love to see Lotor smashed to a pulp.”

Each one of them checked that they had their bayards, and stood together quietly waiting for the two to return. There was a fight to be had, and they were all more than ready to win. 

•••

When Allura and Lotor finally did return, they found themselves facing a line of grim faces, with Coran in the middle looking enraged. Suddenly Keith and Krolia were at their backs with weapons drawn and pointed at them. 

“What’s going on?” Allura asked, confused at the hostile atmosphere. 

“Allura, step away from Lotor,” Lance ordered, pointing his gun at Lotor. 

“I will do no such thing. Tell me what’s happening here!”

“Lotor is a monster, and has been harvesting Altean quintessence for generations!” Romelle was glaring daggers at Lotor, who was looking rather panicked. 

“Lotor has been lying to us this whole time,” added Pidge. “He’s a murderer, just like his father!”

“You know nothing of what you speak!” Lotor seemed to be talking to Allura, not Pidge. 

“What are they talking about?” Allura didn’t trust herself to look at Lotor without punching him where he was. Betrayal wasn’t something she was accustomed to. His words in defense of his actions faded to a distant buzz as anger engulfed her. It wasn’t until he took her hand that she reacted. It was only reflex that she flipped him over and dropped him. He crumpled to the floor and didn’t get back up. 

She was still glaring down at him when an alarm started going off. “The hangars been breached!” Coran exclaimed, hurrying over to the screen to see whoever it was breaking into the Castle. 

“It’s Lotor’s troops, they’re stealing the ships!”

At that moment, things went from bad to worse. Shiro dropped to his knees, clutching his head and screaming. No time for that now. “Allura and I will secure Lotor, Hunk, help Shiro. Everyone else get down to the hangar and and stop those guys!” Lance shouted. 

Splitting up was a mistake. As the others left, Shiro straightened up and attacked. He wasn’t holding back. With brutality and the element of surprise on his side, he was able to take out everyone left in the room and gather up Lotor. 

Things weren’t going much better at the hangar. Lotor’s cronies had made it into the ships and were firing upon Pidge, Krolia, and Keith. They were forced to take cover from the blasts, and as they were crouched down, Lotor’s troops took the opportunity to get away. Pidge looked up in just enough to time see Shiro walking by into the hangar with Lotor slung across his shoulders. 

“Shiros gone mad!” Allura’s voice came frantically through the intercom. “He’s escaping with Lotor! Stop him before he leaves the ship!”

She didn’t hesitate. As soon as she heard Allura, Pidge jumped out of her shelter and ran after Shiro. She got within range of him just as he was starting up a small ship to get away on. Her bayard out, business end pointing at Shiro, all she had to do was fire…

But she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. Looking at him, her hands shook and her resolve faltered. He was supposed to stop just because there was a weapon pointed at him, wasn’t he?

It was Shiro. How could she hurt him? 

And then it was too late. 

It was up to Voltron now. 

•••

But Voltron wasn’t strong enough. Shiro and the others made it out through a wormhole. 

“We’re not going to make it!” Lance yelled as they raced after them. 

“We’re too heavy!”

“Disband!” ordered Keith. As he expected, he was met by a chorus of ‘whats?!’

“The energy from disconnecting much create enough thrust to propel me through the wormhole.”

“You’ll be the only one on the other side,” Allura objected. 

“Do it!”

•••

Keith’s plan worked, but it left the rest of them alone, and unable to do anything more to help. 

Of course, bad things happened in threes. They were working through what to do, how to help Keith and Shiro, when suddenly the Castle went dark. 

“Coran, what’s happening?” Allura asked urgently. 

“It appears the Castle’s systems are being shut down one by one. As though someone has hacked in the ship and let loose a kill protocol of some sort!”

“Have you tried an override?” Pidge asked, rapidly looking for an answer on her screen. 

“Or maybe counteracting it with a live protocol? Is that a thing?”

“It’s moving too fast!”

“Okay, I’m in the system,” Pidge said, more to herself than anyone else. “Subroutines eight through nineteen have me completely locked out. But if I can just skip ahead to- come on, come on, come on-“

“Spectra generator down! Stabilizers are down! Main turbine, also down!” Coran was trying to let Pidge know she really had to hurry up. He sincerely hoped it was working. “Crystal matrix offline! Particle barrier generator down!”

“There! I’ve got it isolated, now I’ve just gotta lock it down with a multi-layered tri-tetragonal quarantine. And… almost… ha! Yes!” Pidge exclaimed as the alarms turned off. 

And then turned back on. What the _fuck?_ Why wouldn’t- how could it know- she froze momentarily as she recognized the coding. No way. She knew where it was from. And she knew how to stop it. 

She managed to deactivate the kill switch for real, just in the nick of time, but she couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe what she’d just had to do. 

It was Shiro. 

It was Shiro that she saved the Castle from. 

•••

Coran, Allura, Hunk, Lance, and Pidge were all in various parts of the Castle, working and waiting. Working on getting the ship up and running, waiting for it to restore to max power, working on moving past the events of the day, waiting for Keith to return with the Black Lion, and hopefully Shiro. They were mostly silent, each trying to get over Shiro’s betrayal. The fact that he would’ve blown up the Castle... was hard to come to terms with. Then the main display turned on, and Matt’s face appeared. 

“Pidge! Are you there?”

“She’s at the teludav, trying to divert some energy to the power core. Should I get her?” Allura asked. “How did you find us?”

“No time, I’ll explain later, let me land somewhere! Hurry!” He spoke urgently, prompting Allura to rush to the control panel. 

“Hang on, let me try and override the shuttle bay so you can get in- our systems are all seriously compromised. How’d you even tap into our communications system?”

“Later Princess, focus! My ship is failing too, I’m running out of air here!”

Oh, hell. She redoubled her efforts, flying through each system as fast as she could. Not even half of it was responding, and she wound up having to send almost all reserve energy to the shuttle bay. But eventually she got there. “Matt, land quick so we can shut the airlock! Pidge, your brother is landing in the shuttle bay now, you should go and see what’s going on.”

Pidge nodded to herself then started to jog to where Matt would be landing. She slowed down as she neared the shuttle bay and realized that she would have to tell Matt about Shiro. How could she, when she didn’t understand herself? She would just have to deal with it when the time came. 

“Matt! What happened?”

“The Galra happened. A small fleet of Galran ships showed up and tried to ambush us. So I got on the ship to stop them and they hit me so I flew to you. I knew you guys would be able to help me. What about you? Why isn’t the Castle working?”

“Well... Shiro’s gone rogue. He wired a virus that basically affected every system on the ship. I managed to stop it from totally taking over, but it’s caused a lot of damage. I’ve been trying to fix the teludav, just to see if we can get anything working.” She prepared herself for the inevitable question of why Shiro attacked the castle, but it never came. Instead, he just started walking. 

“Let me see if I can do something about it.”

Odd. “Okay, let’s... go.” Apparently someone had shown him where the teludav was at some point, because he was able to get himself there without any guidance. Something about him was off. Did he know something about Shiro that the rest of them didn’t? “How’d you know where we were?”

“Your wormhole... gave off a lot of energy,” he said absently, clearly not listening. “So, what have you been doing in here? How much did Shiro get done?”

Odd again. “Mostly running tests to figure out why nothing will turn on. It all looks fine, no wires are frayed, nothings burned, it’s just dead. Now what are you doing?”

“Just finishing up.”

“What? Wait, Matt don’t touch that, the teludav could blow-“ Suddenly she felt herself being hurled across the room and smashing into a wall. She crumpled to the ground, momentarily stunned by the impact. “Ugh... Matt? What are you-?”

Her heart froze when she looked up to meet his eyes. 

His glowing, purple eyes. 

_What?_

_No._

A mechanical _*click*_ , and Pidge realized that he had locked the only door into the room, so there was no chance to get out. He started to meander toward her, slowly but with confidence. The smirk on his face didn’t belong there. Before he reached her, he paused at the teludav control panel and began to dismantle it. 

What the hell was going on? She was still a little dazed from hitting the wall so hard, but she knew that she did not like what he was doing one bit. “Matt, stop, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” he said, forcing open the panel and tugging out a fist full of wires. “I’m finishing what Shiro didn’t.”

“What? No! Why?” She had pushed herself to her legs when she began to walk over to him. But she unintentionally froze when he lifted his gaze to look at her again with his purple eyes and unsettling smile. It was just like Shiro. She couldn’t fight him. 

“Well someone had to blow this shit heap up. Probably would’ve been you, with some of your little ‘experiments’ on this panel. But we didn’t want to wait for you to fuck things up, so here I am.”

Pidge didn’t like the sounds that were starting to come out of the giant machine. She had to think of a way to get him away from there and make him snap out of whatever was going on in his brain. “Matt, come on, stop it, please. I don’t want to hurt you! Just step away from there!”

“Go ahead and try. I’m not- oof!” He grunted as Pidge charged into him and knocked him down a few feet away. 

She didn’t wait for him to stand up before she turned her attention to the teludav and set to work trying to repair whatever he had done. Unfortunately she didn’t get very far before she felt a sharp pain in her thigh. With a cry out, she looked down to see a dagger stuck roughly an inch into her upper leg. Where the hell did that come from? Matt was standing in front of her again, and shoved her back to the ground, yanking it out as she fell. Anxiously, she scooted back, trying to comprehend what was happening. 

First Shiro, now Matt?

“See Katie, there’s only one way to stop me, and we both know you can’t do it. You’re just too weak to do the right thing,” he said with a cold laugh. “And now you and all the others are going to pay the price for that.”

No way was she going to take that lying down. Pidge forced herself back up, shaking a bit when she leaned on her wounded leg. _‘Shake it off,’_ she thought to herself, _‘now's not the time to worry about that.’_

“Matt, just stop and talk to me, what is going on?! Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to. Zarkon’s druids taught me quite a lot about not holding back what I want to do. What I want to do is get rid of you myself, you dumbass.”

Mother _fucker,_ she had just gotten him back, there was no way this could really be happening. But there he was, approaching with a sinister grin. The Galra really had gotten to him first. 

“Do you have any idea how pathetic you are Katie?” he asked. It might have been wearing his face, but the voice wasn’t Matt’s. It was low and gravely and dangerous, and it made Pidge step back away. She lost her footing, and her bad leg buckled under her once more. “You do everything to just to impress your old brother. You have failed at every point in your little mission to save us. Dad is dead now thanks to you.”

No. It couldn’t be. “W-what do you mean?”

“I mean our dad is dead, and it’s because you weren’t fast enough to get to him, Katie!”

“You don’t know that!” Matt would never blame her. Every time he said ‘Katie’ felt like a punch in her stomach. The amount of contempt and disdain in his voice was painful. 

“Yes I do. I saw him die myself. They didn’t do anything with his body. They just threw it in a hole with a thousand other rotting corpses.”

She kept backing up until she hit a wall. He continued walking towards her. “Stay back.”

“You’re just like some annoying little dog that follows you around everywhere. Trying to be just like your older brother. You never could be, you know. You’ll always be ten steps behind me.” 

He was only a short distance away from her now, so she grabbed for her bayard and held it up in front of herself shakily. “Matt, please, I don’t want to hurt you. Snap out of it. And for fucks sake, stay away!”

Matt stopped a minute and cocked his head. “Snap out of it? There’s nothing for me to snap out of. This is what I want. Becoming an only child is my choice, and I can’t lie, I look forward to it. You’ve always been nothing but a nuisance, it’s about time I get rid of you!”

He was almost right in front of her when he stopped again and held his wicked looking dagger aloft. “It’s you or me Katie, and you’re too much of a wuss to take me out. Let’s just make this quick and easy.”

“No!” She forced herself up against the wall. He was still taller than she was, but at least now she could feel a bit more dignified standing than sitting. Not that it really mattered. What mattered was stopping Matt. “Come on, we don’t have to fight. Just talk to me and let me help you.”

“Help? You couldn’t help anyone. I don’t need you. You might as well have stayed on Earth for all you’ve done.”

Good god, he was hitting everywhere it hurt the most. She would have to fight him, maybe even hurt him. If it went further than that...

He had her at a disadvantage; he was uninjured, working with a longer, sharper blade, no conscious to hold him back. Meanwhile she had a hole in her leg that wasn’t wanting to clot, the small blade on her bayard, and a mind that was screaming at her not to harm her brother. But it wasn’t Matt. He wouldn’t do this, he wouldn’t put her through this. Somehow, that didn’t make her feel better about what was about to happen. 

Gritting her teeth, Pidge took a fighting pose, firmly grounding herself and raising her arms in front of her defensively. Matt’s grin widened as he mirrored her. 

Then he made the first move. 

He lunged toward her, aiming his knife straight at her chest, leaving his stomach and torso vulnerable. She took a chance, dodging down and striking up at his diaphragm. When he stumbled back, Pidge straightened up and punched his jaw hard enough to whip his head around at a ninety degree angle. He dropped down to one knee, and for a second, she hoped that that had been enough to stop him. 

But of course it wasn’t. 

After a very brief pause, Matthew swung his other leg out rapidly and knocked Pidge’s legs out from under her. The rapid movement sent both their weapons sliding along the floor away from them. And so it turned into an all-out, hand to hand fight. The sound of skin hitting skin, noses crunching, and ripping scratches filled the room. She may be tough, but Matt had done some considerable bulking up in his time in space. If she wanted to beat him, she would need her bayard. 

Fuck. She had to get it back. 

Right after she had to roll away from the knife flying down at her face. Son of a bitch, when did he get the chance to find that? She had eyes on her weapon halfway across the room and went scampering after it, all too aware of Matt right at her back. Every move she made sent a wave of pain down her leg, and she was so tired- there it was. She snatched up her bayard and rolled over just in time to see Matt looming over her, dagger aloft and ready to fly right down into her chest. 

Without thinking, Pidge shut her eyes and thrust her small weapon up as hard as she could at the very same time he brought his down. She felt his blade pierce her right shoulder all the way through and jerk down towards her lungs, causing her to scream. She then registered that her bayard had run into something soft. Then she heard a choked gurgle, and felt a warm splash of liquid hit her face. She was suddenly all too aware of the coppery scent and sticky warmth of blood. 

She was terrified to open her eyes, but she had to know what she had done. She rolled onto her front, clutching at the wound on her chest, then shifted onto her knees. And there was Matt. Hands clamped down on his neck to try a stem the bleeding. Without a moment's hesitation, Pidge tore off a part of the hem of her shirt and shoved it into Matt’s hand. The rag quickly soaked through, and it seemed like he could pass out at any second. She frantically grabbed onto his face in an attempt to steady him. 

“No, nonono no! Matt, just hold on, okay, the Castle should have power soon, you just need to stay with me long enough to get you to a healing pod, and you’ll be okay, I promise. We can fix this, you just gotta-“ she stopped to cough roughly, and was only mildly alarmed when she saw that she had hacked up blood. “We’re both gonna be fine, okay? We’ll both make it and- and- Matt come on, no! We just found each other again! I just got you back after so long, please don’t go now! Don’t leave me now!”  


His eyes were slipping shut and he was swaying back and forth, and she was sobbing, pressing her forehead to his. Even if it wasn’t her brother- if whoever or whatever it was- if he died, she would lose her last connection to Matt. She had to help him. 

Her first fleeting thought was emergency tracheotomy. A commonly overlooked danger of penetrating neck wounds was suffocation. But she had nothing to serve as a tracheal tube. 

Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself shakily to a a standing position and limped as fast as she could toward the control panel. First thing she had to do was get him out of there, and that meant she had to unlock the door. _‘Thank god,”_ she thought, _‘he didn’t do any damage to the locking system.’_

She heard the door open, and wasted no time getting back to him, her bad leg dragging behind her. It took all the strength she had left to heave his body up and sling his arm around her shoulders. Powered by determination and adrenaline, she walked as quickly as she could through the door. If she could just make it to the recovery pods… it was a long way there, and every second she wasn’t there was killing them both. 

It was getting hard to feel if he was still breathing, and it she was starting to struggle drawing in air as well. He was well beyond pale and completely unresponsive. Trying to drag his limp body all the way to the pods was fast becoming an impossible scenario, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She was losing a lot of blood too from her stab wounds, and her mind felt like it was going fuzzy. She needed-

“Pidge?!” Lance came sprinting at them both with wide eyes. He stopped in front of them, catching Pidge by the shoulders as she nearly tipped over. “What happened- why are you covered in blood?”

“No time,” she rasped, shoving Matt at Lance. “Take him to the pods and get him set up.”

“But-“

“Now! _Run!”_

He didn’t really think of disobeying. Lance’s mind was moving so fast he couldn’t even make sense of half of it. So he heaved him up over his shoulder and ran. 

Pidge watched him leave, swaying where she stood. Her chest ached. Not because of vicious gash she was sporting; she could hardly feel that. In fact, she was hardly aware of her injuries at all any more. No, she was hurting because she had lost two brothers in less than 24 hours. In the back of her mind, she was thinking that she should probably follow Lance. Instead she fell to her knees. There was nothing more that she could do.


	6. I Did What I Had To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge has to recover and the rest of the team has to fight Lotor without her. Takes place in season 6, episode 6.  
> Few things to note:  
> The first part of this comes off very Plance-y. I didn't really intend for it to but my little shipper heart bled through. It can be read as romantic or not though!  
> The last half or so is kind of a summery of the episode, with a few changes to suit the story.

Coran had managed to get the lights on and some power back to the Castle when Lance returned to the hallway where he had left her, dragging Hunk along beside him. They found Pidge trembling on her knees, fists clenched, covered in blood, and breathing heavily. Hunk’s hands flew over his mouth, and Lance had to grip his shoulders to keep him from falling. 

Pidge was still gripping her bayard in one hand, and the small blade was dripping in blood. She was looking rough. Her clothes were torn, she had various cuts everywhere, a worrisomely large slice taken out of her left shoulder and a mean-looking stab wound in her upper right thigh. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie, and Hunk wasn’t handling it well. 

“... Pidge?”

“Haggar. Haggar did this to him, and she put him here on purpose! She knew who he was, what he meant to me, she knew this would happen! It was all her!” Her voice was ragged, bordering on crazed as it rose in volume from a growl to a screech. She grabbed Hunk’s arm to pull herself up and swayed before pushing past them out the door. He almost threw up when he saw the blood smeared over his sleeve. By now she was running entirely on adrenaline

“I swear to god, that bitch will pay for this. I am going to destroy her, and every last _fucking_ this around her! All her fucking druids, all her fucking experiments, _everything!_ She is going to suffer, and she is going to _beg me to kill her!”_ She was screaming now, stumbling through the Castle of Lions, closely tailed by Lance and Hunk, both looking totally alarmed. 

Pidge led them to her Lion‘s hangar, and they both realized then what she was doing. “Wait, Pidge, you can’t seriously be thinking of going after her now? The Castle is down for who knows how long. We need you here.”

She didn’t seem to want to listen to Lance, who looked desperately over at Hunk and gestured for him to jump in. “Uh, Pidge, do you think we should hold off on the whole revenge thing until we’ve all regrouped? Revisit it then so everyone can be involved?”

“I don’t give a shit about them,” Pidge snapped. Although it wasn’t strictly speaking true, it was all she could think of to say. “Shiros off the rails and Keith is gone. I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back until she’s gone.”

“Could I at least wrap you up first? You’ve got some injuries that have got me worried. You can’t fight when you can’t walk. I- I don’t even know how you’re still vertical,” Hunk said in a fit desperation to keep her with them. By all rights, she shouldn’t be able to stand up, much less fight a dangerous witch . Every few steps she took, she seemed to trip over nothing. She kept coughing violently and her breathing was labored. It was clear that she wasn’t going to make it much farther. Luckily it worked. She stopped, wobbling on her leg, then turned around frustratedly. 

“Fine. But hurry… hurry up.” The boys were alarmed to see the clammy gray skin on her face and the clear lack of expression on it. Without warning, she suddenly pitched forward into Lance’s arms, no longer able to stand up. 

“Shit!”

“Lance, she’s getting worse- take her to the pod room. I’m gonna go get Allura and Coran and meet you there.” Hunk was staring at her and tapping his fingers together anxiously. It took him a second to spur himself into action and rush away.

“Um. Okay. Pidge,” Lance said awkwardly, bending his knees to look at her closely. Shock, from blood loss. Probably. He struggled to think back on his basic first aid training back at the academy. 

_‘Alright Lance, you can do this. Shock. Body starting to shut down due to restricted blood flow and lack of oxygen, or something like that. Protocol mandates… wait until a medical professional arrives to transport to a hospital._

_Wait._

_That’s me. I’m the medical professional transporting to the hospital.’_

Oh boy. 

She was shivering in his arms, and he vaguely remembered something about shock blankets. Although he didn’t have one of those, Lance managed to pull off his jacket and wrap it around her shoulders, trying to make sure that most of the pressure was located over her injured shoulder. He wasn’t sure how much good it would actually do, but it made him feel a bit better. Once he got it around her as tightly as he could, he carefully lifted her up and cradled her closely to his chest. 

Now he had to get her to the pods. 

_‘Keep her calm and comfortable. Talk to her.’_

“Pidge. Hey, Pidge, look at me, okay? Talk to me.”

No answer. She just stared up at him blankly. He was walking as fast as he could without shaking her too much. 

“Come on Pidge, stick with me. What happened in there?”

“We fought. He lost.” Her voice was weak and hard to hear, but at least she said something.

“What happened? Why did Matt look like that?” She probably didn’t want to talk about it, but that was all Lance could think to discuss as he rushed through the Castle. 

“That wasn’t my brother. Matt was already gone. He’s probably been gone a long time.” Every word she said sounded strained and painful. When he glanced down at her, despite the glazed-over look on her face, there were tears on her cheeks. She had killed before- they all had. They were in the middle of a war. But that had all been Galra. Enemies. They’d never killed other humans before, much less _family._ “He… was trying to blow up the Castle. I did what I had to.”

 _I did what I had to._ It was a phrase every Paladin knew well. At first it was used after missions that involved having to take the lives of Galra officers and soldiers. But as time went on, and the missions grew more and more complex, it became more of a justification for difficult, almost impossible decisions. Save the hundreds of innocents stranded on a dying planet or take out a battalion of Galra ships before they could do even more damage? Save mother and child prisoners or gather the intel that would win their next battle?

Fight your flesh and blood or let him destroy everything you’ve worked for?

Pidge had always been the best of them at putting aside emotions and making the hard choices. Her only rival in that area was Keith. The fact that she’d been able to fight Matt and beat him- that blew Keith out of the running for sure. Lance was very much impressed by the young girl in his arms. Impressed, and more than a little scared. He decided not to push any harder, and changed the subject. “That’s alright. It’s okay, Pidge, you’re okay. You’re okay, I promise. Tell me something. Tell me about your favorite science.”

“Mmm… depends.”

“Depends? Depends on what?”

“My mood.”

“Really? Your favorite science depends on your mood?”

“Mmhm.”

“Alright… what is it right now?” They we’re getting close to the infirmary, where Lance was praying that Hunk and the others would be waiting with a pod. 

“Biology.” 

“Really? Why biology?”

“First thing I thought of.” Was all Pidge could summon up as they rushed into the pod room. A thin trail of Matt’s blood lined the floor to the pod that he was rigged up in, and Lance tried not to think too hard about the morbid path Pidge must’ve weaved through the Castle. 

The others weren’t there. Why weren’t they there? Pidge was still breathing, albeit shallowly. Lance was realizing his mistake in carry her in his arms rather than over his shoulder like he had Matt. Now he had no free hands to try and set up a healing pod for her. All he could do was hope that the others would show up soon.

“Come on Pidge, look at me,” Lance urged, craning his neck to press his forehead to hers. “I need to to stay with me.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly and struggled to focus on his face. 

“Atta girl. You gotta stay with me here, we need you. Hunk is gonna be here any time now, and he’s bringing Coran and Allura. They’ll all get you set up in a healing pod, and soon enough you’ll be all better and we can figure out what to do with Matt and Shiro. Things will go back to normal- well, normal for us. You just need to hold on and stay with me until they get here, okay? The only way that happens is if you stay with me.” Lance found himself rocking her like he used to with his nieces and nephews. He was growing more and more anxious as it looked like she was starting to lose the battle to blood loss. Any minute now and they would show up and Pidge would be safe. 

If he was being honest, he couldn’t believe that she had even made it this far. 

“Lance… ‘M cold.” She muttered. She was no longer shaking, and Lance didn’t like that. She was far too still in his arms. “And- scared. I don’ wanna die. Lance, please- I don’ wanna die- not yet. D-don’t let me-”

“I know honey, I know. You won’t. Just a little longer now.” He pressed his lips to her forehead in an attempt to be comforting, squeezing his eyes shut tight. A rush of pure rage flooded through him. She was so scared- she had just been betrayed by the two people she trusted most. How could they? How could Shiro and Matt do that to her, to Pidge, of all people? She was so small and fragile and the fear on her face didn’t belong there and he swore _he could kill the men that did this to her-_

She just had to stay alive a little longer. 

But she wasn’t talking anymore, and he watched as her eyes slipped shut, and her chest stopped moving, and she was still, god she was too still. He was crying too now, as panic started to take over. The possibility that he would lose one of his best friends was becoming too real. His chest ached and he was struggling to avoid hyperventilating. “Pidge?! No, no, Pidge wake up- _Pidge please-“_

He was interrupted by Hunk, Allura and Coran bursting through the door. 

“Guys!”

“Lance, what-“

“Get a pod ready, _now!”_ Lance’s voice came out sharper than he meant, and at a screeching volume, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Coran quickly went about doing that while Hunk and Allura walked over to where Lance and Pidge were. Allura stood close to Pidge’s head and slowly ran her fingers through her messy, matted brown hair. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers were stained a sickening red. 

“Lance, what happened? Did she tell you anything?” Allura asked quietly. Her heart was racing as she stared down at the pale, horribly _still_ girl in Lance’s arms. 

“No, nothing. Just that they fought, and he lost. The teludav room is like a war scene. There’s blood everywhere, and Matt- Matt isn’t Matt anymore.”

“What? How?”

“Before you go into that, let’s get her into this pod,” Coran ordered. “Not a second to waste- is she even still breathing? Come on Lance, quickly.”

Lance hurried over to carefully set Pidge in her pod. “No she’s not- how long do you think we have?”

“Her wounds are incredibly severe. And it doesn’t help that she’s not... I’d guess at least five days. Unless...” Coran trailed off, frowning and twisting his mustache anxiously. 

“What?”

“Unless the pods aren’t able to heal her. They don’t work miracles. They can only heal what the body can heal on its own. And Pidge- Pidge died,” Coran said bluntly. “How long she’s in there depends on how strong she is.”

“Great,” Lance said with a small sigh of relief and flopped down on one of the steps on the ground. He was quickly joined by Allura and Hunk. “She’ll make it. We all know she can. She’s strong. Stronger than most of us. That gives us time to come up with a plan.”

No one wanted to address what it would mean if Lance was wrong. 

“What do we need a plan for?” Coran asked, finishing up at the pod’s control center. “What happened?”

Suddenly the anger was back and Lance was right back on his feet. He had half a mind to march up to Matt’s pod and turn it off then and there. The only thing that stopped him was the memory of Pidge’s voice screaming at him.

_‘Take him to the pods and get him set up. Now. Run!’_

He couldn’t take Matt away from her. Not now. She had to be a part in deciding what to do with him. 

“Haggar.” Hunk took over when he noticed the look on Lance’s face. As he spoke, he stood and walked over to Lance. Cautiously, Hunk reached out and rested a hand on Lance’s shoulder. When he wasn’t shrugged off, he stepped closer and wrapped his arms around Lance tightly. Lance, for his part, turned around and returned the hug fiercely. His face pressed to Hunk’s chest, Lance let out a heart-wrenching sob and squeezed even tighter when he felt Hunk start to cry himself. 

The two of them had been Pidge’s friend longer than any of this- before the war, before Voltron, before space. They’d been friends through _so much_ the thought of losing any one of them was impossible to consider. And now Hunk and Lance were faced with just that, with losing the third person in their trio. All because she was betrayed by the person she trusted more than anyone else. The Alteans sat back quietly, watching the human’s emotional breakdown respectfully. 

“We didn’t get the story out of her- at least I didn’t- but I think she might have messed with Matt the same way she messed with Shiro,” Hunk finally continued with a shaky voice and a long intake of air. Neither he nor Lance had released the other. They weren’t sure if they’d ever be able to. Lance’s face was still in Hunk’s shoulder, but Hunk was looking at Allura fand Coran with red eyes. “I mean, we don’t know for sure that it was Haggar who messed with Shiro, but I can’t think of anyone else who possibly could have. Can you?”

Everyone shook their heads. “No. What should we do? We can’t go after her. Without the Black and Green Lions, we don’t stand a chance. We probably wouldn’t make it within a galaxy’s radius of her. We need Voltron.”

“Even if we had Shiro- or Keith- or whoever pilots the Black Lion now, I don’t think Pidge would be able to form Voltron.” Allura was looking over at the pod that Pidge was in with a small frown on her face. “Physical injuries aside, there’s no way she’ll be mentally fit to fight any time soon.”

“Well then, let’s just hope we won’t need to fight any time soon then,” Coran said simply. 

“Yeah, cause we never need to fight any time soon.”

“Is this _normal_ for you people?” Romelle asked incredulously, looking vaguely horrified. She and Krolia had just walked in on one hell of a scene. And startled everyone. Pidge and Matt, bloodied and broken in healing pods, Hunk and Lance just pulling apart with red faces, and the two others sitting together looking exhausted. The two of them had been working at the back of the ship near the thrusters. Krolia had a hand resting protectively between Romelle’s shoulder blades as she took in the room. 

“It’s hard to say what’s normal for us,” Hunk replied wearily. “When I stop and think about it, the only really weird thing is... is actually nothing. This is pretty par for the course around here. You glad you joined us?”

Romelle looked slightly concerned, but pushed past it. “Well what now? Krolia and I couldn’t get anything working properly. Neither of us really recognize much of the technology on this ship though. Some of it is familiar. I can tell that it’s something like an ancestor to the technology we possessed back at the colony, but enough has changed that I don’t know where to begin to look.”

“And it’s totally different than any Galra ship I’ve ever worked on” Krolia said smoothly. “I’ll at least need some instruction on what to do so I don’t break anything more than it already is. So what happened here? Why is Pidge in such bad shape?”

Lance sighed and recounted the basics of what had happened. Neither woman had anything to say; both were rendered speechless. 

“So that’s what the druids have been working on. Just when I thought they couldn’t get any more messed up. The empire never ceases to disgust me,” Krolia finally said. She walked over to the healing pod that contained Pidge and rested her hand on it. “Pidge. I am more sorry than you could ever know for how much my people have taken from you. One day I hope we can repay you in some way.”

“Krolia, unfortunately she can’t hear you. Right now she’s in deep stasis. Almost all bodily functions have been shut down so that her body can focus on healing.” Coran was standing beside Allura now, watching the other two carefully around the pods. 

“What were you talking about before we came in? Is there something we could help you with?”

There was a moment of silence where they all stared at one another blankly until Allura spoke up “Pidge won’t be able to pilot the Green Lion. Even if the Black Lion returns,we won’t be able to form Voltron. And with the Castle in the shape that it’s in, we have no defenses. We’re just sitting targets right now. The only thing keeping us safe is our total isolation. But if Lotor returns, we won’t stand a chance.“

Krolia’s eyes narrowed. “You mean _when_ the Black Lion returns. Someone will just have to fill in for Pidge if it comes down to that. Romelle would be perfect for that. You’ve already got some experience with Altean tech, you can figure this out.”

“It’s not that simple I’m afraid. The Green Lion needs to choose her own Paladin. You can’t just waltz up to her and say ‘knock knock! Let me in, I’m going to ride you around a little bit!’ That’s not how the Lions work. You need to bond with them. So far the Green Lion hasn’t shown any sign of letting anyone else pilot them.”

“Well, Coran if we ask Green nicely, she might let one of these ladies borrow her for a bit,” Lance suggested. “It couldn’t hurt.”

It was clear that none of the others had really considered that to be an option. “But... Pidge is the Green Lion. She’s been the Green Lion from the start.”

“Yeah, and I was the Blue Lion at the start. Things change Hunk. I’m not saying it’s a permanent thing. Just until Pidge is back up and running.”

“It’s worth a try. Let’s go to the hangar.” Allura stood up and led the way. 

•••

Half an hour later and the Green Lion hadn’t budged for anyone. 

“Looks like she’s as stubborn as her Paladin,” Hunk remarked. “I guess we just gotta hope that we don’t need to form Voltron.”

“There’s nothing we can do about this right now. We need to focus on shutting the gate to the quintessence field before Lotor returns. That’s our mission now. Let’s go,” Allura commanded. 

Lance and Hunk nodded and started to jog to their respective Lions. Coran stayed close to Allura and said, “I’ll stay here and work on getting the ship up and running again.”

“Good. We’re going to need all the help we can in the fight against Lotor.”

•••

“Lotor could be here at any second. What’s the plan?” Hunk asked. The three of them were hovering in the air uncertainty. The anxiety between them all was tangible. 

“Well the Castle of Lions is broken down, so there’s no help there. The Black and Green Lions aren’t with us, so we can’t form Voltron. We’re just going to have to do what we can.” Allura replied grimly. 

“Got it. Attempt to survive.” Lance’s tone was equally grim. 

“Last time we fought Lotor, we had five ships and Lotor had two, and he still kicked our butts. The time, he’s going to have three ships and we’re only gonna have three. Does- does anyone else see where I’m going with this?” Hunk asked nervously. 

“Guys, they’re here. Coran, how you doing with those repairs?” Lance asked, ignoring Hunk. Now was the absolutely wrong time for letting those kinds of thoughts spread. 

No response for Coran. And Lotor and his cronies were right in front of them. Not good. Lance tuned him and Allura out as they argued over what he had done, how many he had killed, what his endgame was. None of that was important to Lance. He was too busy trying to think of some sort of strategy, anything to keep them alive. Unfortunately, Allura lost her temper. And Lotor retaliated before he could formulate anything useful. 

The fight was on. And already it was going badly. Lotor’s ships were fast, and the pilots were ruthless. It was all the three of them could to do keep the blasts away from the Castle and outmaneuver their enemies. Even when Keith came swooping in, seemingly from nowhere, they were still struggling just to stay alive. 

•••

“Come on. They need our help! I know I’m not Pidge, but right now I’m what’s here. The other Lions are in danger! If we don’t go help them now, they’re all going to be destroyed! My son is out there, and I just got him back, now let’s go you fuck-“ Krolia stopped herself before she went too far. Insulting the giant robo-lion would do no good. She had to earn her trust. “Look, I don’t expect you to accept me as your regular Paladin. I don’t _want_ to be your Paladin. But if you don’t help me right now, your rightful Paladin is going to die. We just need-“

That did it. She was momentarily amazed that the Green Lion cared so much for Pidge. She would allow a stranger to fly her if it meant saving her Paladin. 

“Okay. I’ll try not to let you down. Let’s go.”

Time to save her kid’s ass.

••

They needed help. They needed Voltron. They needed-

The Green Lion. She came rocketing out of the Castle and crashed right into Lotor’s ship. 

“Pidge?!”

“Ah- no, it’s me,” Krolia’s voice came through the speakers. “I have no idea how to fly this thing though. It’s mostly just carrying me around. But I’m here, and I seriously hope it’s going to be on autopilot for most of this fight.”

“Wait, did you mean to crash?” Lance asked, amused. 

“Shut up. Let’s beat these guys.”

“Alright. Let’s form Voltron!” Keith shouted. 

“Oh- um- okay, Krolia, your got this,” she muttered to herself. “We can figure this- oh.” 

The Green Lion really was operating mostly on autopilot somehow. She didn’t even touch anything and it was flying to formation. Maybe it sensed the dire situation and was acting accordingly. Alright. She was an arm now. This wasn’t so hard. 

“Mom, we need our shield! Get it up!” 

“Aww, you just called her mom- oof! Seriously Krolia, we need the shield,” Lance grunted as a blast hit him dead on. 

Shit, it just got hard. There were so many things to press and pull and turn, which one would put up the shield? As she stared, one button seemed to glow brighter than the rest. What the hell. It had to do something. She took a deep breath, muttering to herself in Galran, and slammed down on the button. 

That did it. Voltron’s shield flew right in front of them just in time to block another harsh attack. The Green Lion was literally walking her through it. They could do this. 

•••

 

They could do this if they could if they hit him. 

“Getting power from the quintessence is the only way we can match his strength,” said Keith, panting heavily. 

“Can we do that?” Hunk asked. 

“If he can do it, Voltron can. Can’t we?” Krolia answered. 

“My father did it once before, but it was extremely dangerous.” Allura was hesitant. She couldn’t say why exactly she was anxious. It was either stay here, do nothing, and be killed, or it was try to create a rip to an unlimited supply of quintessence which could potentially tip the odds in their favor or drive them all mad and kill them. 

“Do we have a choice?” Lance asked, voicing Allura’s thoughts. 

“We need your help Allura,” Keith said in an uncharacteristically soft voice, “we have to try.”

“I may be able to guide us in, but I’ll need you all to focus your energy.”

•••

Being in the quintessence field was unlike anything any of them had ever experienced. The raw powder surrounding them was incredible, nearly overwhelming, making each of them feel more alive than they ever had before. 

“Can you hear your Lion talking to you?” Keith asked, amazed. 

Krolia closed her eyes and tried to listen to the Green Lion. It wasn’t exactly words she felt at first, just a strong sense of protectiveness. Then the words came. 

“This power will be enough to save my young Paladin, if we are wise enough to use it. Krolia of the Galra, you have proven yourself to be brave and determined. You alone had the courage to return to me to risk your life for the others. You would have made a worthy Paladin.”

“Thank you.” Krolia whispered in awe. Never in her life had she thought to be on this position, and certainly not in the Green Lion. 

“Feel the quintessence coursing through us. Feel it enrich us with its strength. Now use it, Krolia.”

•••

“We can’t just leave him!” Allura argued desperately. 

Lotor’s ship was floating away, unmoving and totally powered down. Voltron wasn’t in much better shape. They had won the fight, but the raw energy surrounding them was starting to overwhelm Voltron’s systems. 

“Allura, we gotta go now!” Lance insisted. 

“Lotor’s made his choice. Let’s get out of here Allura,” Keith said, appearing on screen in her Lion. 

•••

“Oh, you’re back!” Coran yelled excitedly over the radio. He had been anxiously holding his breath the whole time they were gone, pacing up and down the Castle. He’d managed to get most of it up and running, but it wouldn’t mean much if none of the Paladins survived. 

“Lotor is no longer a threat,” Keith said grimly. 

“Right. I’m afraid we face a bigger threat now. Lotor’s jumping in and out of the quintessence field created multiple, growing rifts in the fabric of time and space.”

“What does that mean?” Lance asked. 

“It means that unless we do something fast, those tears will continue to expand until all of existence as we know it is destroyed,” Hunk answered. He was already rapidly using buttons and trying to see if there was anything that could be done. 

“We have to do something!” Keith was looking thoroughly exhausted it had just been one thing after the next. 

“Scanning the rift for any strand refabrication possibilities,” Coran said, working just as fast as Hunk. 

“I’m running a few different models now to see if there’s any chance it can close on its own,” added Hunk. 

“... nothing.”

“No, me neither.”

“How much time do we have?” Keith asked. 

“Based on the way those rifts are expanding,” Coran said, looking carefully at the multiple tears in front of him, “about fifteen doboshes.”

“Allura, you have to have a way to close it.” Lance was desperate. The thought of having gone through all this, just to have it end here, like this, was unbearable. “Voltron opened it up, maybe we can- I don’t know! There’s gotta be a way!”

“I’m sorry,” Allura said helplessly, “I just don’t possess that level of alchemic knowledge!”

“The only thing that could possible pull that rift closed would be a source of gravity more powerful than a supermassive black hole,” Hunk said. 

“Any chance we can find one and tow it over here in fifteen doboshes?” Lance was only half kidding. 

“Wait a tic. The teludav!”


End file.
